


This Could Be You!

by TheNot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Hunk has a personality? and backstory? ish?, Keith is autistic because I say so, Lance has anxiety, M/M, Mild Transphobia, Misgendering, Slow Burn, Trans!Keith, descriptions of SRS (bottom surgery) options, discussions of transitioning, includes gays shopping at Target, mild skin picking, nonbinary!pidge, trans!Lance, within-trans-community transphobia, youtube au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:45:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11415318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNot/pseuds/TheNot
Summary: When Keith’s favorite trans YouTuber, LanceTrance strikes just the wrong nerve with him upon announcing his decision to get SRS (bottom surgery), Keith, a trans man himself, decides to let his anger boil over at fan meet-up in his city. Little does he know that Keith’s brand fiery competition and zeal has been exactly what Lance is looking for.Rated Mature for graphic discussions of sex and sex organs. Updated 9/5/17!!! Next update may be late due to hurricane whoops





	1. Needing a Dick

**Author's Note:**

> If you see this and think "uh, didn't you already post this? like a while ago?". Yes!! But after losing my groove a bit I came back and rewrote this whole chapter and wrote two more. So if you read the first version of this chapter, pleeease take a chance to reread it bc I promise it's much better, more nuanced, and makes more sense with where I'm going in the future.
> 
> Conflict within the trans community is something I'm pretty passionate about and I want to make sure I get it right! I am a trans dude who hasn't gotten even a step towards transitioning myself so if anyone sees something that doesn't seem right/bothers them, I WELCOME the chance to improve my story and knowledge so please comment and let me know!

The moment the kickstand of his motorbike _clanged_ onto the pavement, Keith was already halfway up the stairs to his apartment. A grueling 12-hour shift behind the register at his local Galaxy Mart after staying up until 2AM writing a paper for his online class made him desperate to get home and rest on anything remotely resembling a cushion. He scrambled with his keys, missing and then shoving his apartment key into the lock, evoking in his mind an image of some kid in a horror movie trying desperately to get away from some big horrible Awful.

Once inside, his bag and leather jacket were immediately discarded, his shoes toed off, and he made a beeline to his single couch, a starch-infested futon. As his sore postural muscles relaxed slightly on the plastic-y material, he thought smugly of the guy that sold him the futon second-hand who claimed that the couch was “literally” trash when Keith happily handed him twenty bucks. “I’m used to being uncomfortable,” Keith had said, rather coolly if his memory served right.

Recalling that he hadn’t checked his phone since his lunch break seven hours ago, Keith yanked his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through various notifications. One: A once-stoner, now-loser “friends” from high school had a new girlfriend on Facebook, named some indecipherable variant of Caitlyn with way too many e’s, i’s, and y’s. Two: The only twitter he followed, @CryptidWatch had a few live updates on recent sightings from locations Keith could never dream of visiting – Brazil, Japan, Montana. Three: An e-mail from Shiro – exciting, but he’d take a look later.

And four: a new video from Lance Sanchez, AKA LanceTrance (username actually beachboi337). The small bubble on Keith’s phone showed the title of “This Could Be You! [+ BIG NEWS]” and a thumbnail of the YouTube host himself, with his arm around someone with a question mark for a head. A series of poorly-drawn arrows indicated this question-mark-man numerous times. Instinctively, Keith huffed and scrolled back up to the top of his notifications. Maybe he _would_ read Shiro’s e-mail now.

\----------

_Subject Line: Kickin’ It (LOL) in India!_

_Hey Keith! I hope you had an okay day at work (and I hope you got some decent studying done!). The grind never ends, huh?_

_Allura and I have recently left Kenya for India, as she recently got a promotion, which necessitated a change in location. And you should see her – since arriving here, she has been a NATURAL leader. Seriously, this woman would be my pick if there was ever a World War 3 (or a World War Z!). Luckily, she must still have use for me as she keeps having me tag along at meetings and dinners. She’s even asked me to dinner alone a few times – AND paid for it! She must really appreciate our teamwork._

_Anyway, here are some pics of me and some of the village kids kicking around a soccer ball- oops! I mean football. At first, I think they went easy on me because of the whole one-arm thing, but once they realized I technically can’t get a hand-ball, shit suddenly got REAL._

_I hope you’ve been able to make at least a few friends in my absence…the moody emo Keith from high school should probably_ stay _in high school. I’ve gotta run now, but send me a reply when you get a chance!_

_Be safe, (and also take off your binder, I know you’ve been wearing it for way too long, don’t even try with me)_

_Shiro_

_P.S. Did you get my joke in the Subject Line?!_

To Shiro’s credit, Keith did snort at the borderline dad-joke included in the message. What was more humorous was Shiro’s combined admiration and ignorance of Allura. To anyone else, a woman wanting to be around them constantly, and pay for things, and bring them across the whole fucking world for humanitarian work, would be an obvious sign of someone smitten. Yet, Keith knew staying in his lane and letting Shiro work it out for himself would be the best idea for everyone involved. Plus, it was less effort.

The e-mail had four attached pictures. Three showed Shiro, drenched in sweat in his old Garrison College t-shirt, attempting to kick a soccer ball amidst a small army of young boys. In the first two, Shiro was wearing his worn-out Nike’s but by the third he had taken a hint from the barefooted children and ditched the sneakers. The final picture was a selfie taken by Allura, with a haggard Shiro and around 9 energetic Indian boys grinning behind her.

Seeing Allura’s beautiful smile did burn a small hole of envy in Keith’s gut, only since this woman taking his brother away and leaving him alone in Austin. Being trans was hard enough. Being trans in Texas was even harder. Being trans in Texas with your only lifeline gone? Keith would admit it was kind of the shittiest loneliness he had ever felt. Although he was fiercely protective of his older brother, he did feel genuinely glad for their bone-headed love and dedication to facilitating infrastructure in developing nations. What sort of jerk _wouldn’t_ be happy for them?

Distracting himself by recalling Shiro’s warning, Keith heaved himself off the futon and stumbled into his closet of a room, pulling his ugly barf-yellow polo off his body from behind (“the man way” he referred to it – which is why enjoyed doing it so aggressively). Next, he begrudgingly entered the view of his full-length mirror to begin the process of prying his binder off his sticky torso. Keith folded the bottom hem over his chest, up to his armpits, pinched his eyes shut, and yanked the spandex over his head. The pleasant feeling of freedom clashed messily with the bounce of his chest after removal.

Keith wasn’t really one for appearances. Sure, he preferred laying low and not wearing anything to draw attention to himself, but he didn’t care a whole lot about looking super masculine in particular. Part of that was due to the sheer size of his hips and chest, as well as his preference for longer hair, all of which made any attempt to “man up” feel like a cheap attempt at playing pretend. He could handle being misgendered by customers who saw his shape and made assumptions, as long as those assumptions kept more aggressive opinions at arm’s reach. The binder, the weight of his leather jacket, the sturdy feeling of his bike between his legs – for the most part, these things were all he needed to help calm the stormy sensual experience that was his dysphoria. Some people were visually-oriented; he was feeling-oriented. One of his past foster mother’s words haunted him slightly: “Katherine, you’re so autistic!” _Then why not take me to get diagnosed, bitch_?

Sensing his thoughts beginning to whirl in a downward spiral, Keith pulled on one of his oversized hoodies, switched his black skinny jeans for self-titled “swishy” shorts, and swerved towards his miniature kitchen to reheat some Kraft dinner. Domestic routines took the edge off.

Back on the futon, swaddled in bulky clothing with a warm, neon orange bowl of pasta, Keith took out his phone and selected his YouTube notifications. Though he would never admit it, the only channel he actually subscribed to direct notifications for was LanceTrance’s. The rest of his time on the site was dedicated to lots of other channels with a variety of topics including aeronautical education, cryptid searches, trans journeys, and knife-fighting techniques. The reason Lance stood out to him so much was still somewhat hazy for him. Maybe it was his boundless energy, even when doing a stern life-update video. Maybe it was his camaraderie with his editors and friends, Hunk and Pidge. Maybe it was his dedication to trans men not having to fit a masculine bubble.

When Keith opened the video and hit play, his eyes were drawn to Lance’s sparkly purple tank top and heavy indigo eye make-up. Not fitting into a masculine bubble is right.

_“Hey kittens!”_ Lance practically purred, leaning in towards his camera. It was set up so that it looked like the same location as a normal laptop webcam, like for a typical vlog, but Keith knew from his behind-the-scenes videos that Lance and Hunk had a computer set-up consisting of two monitors framing his camera mounted on a mini-tripod, the actual computer stowed under the desk.

_“Now, I know you all are really anxious to hear what my BIG NEWS might be-_ “ he paused to wink dramatically at the camera. “ _But first you’ll want to hear about this other tidbit of news that may excite and maybe even_ arouse _you~”_

Lance’s sexual humor was usually not Keith’s cup of tea. The boy _did_ practically leak twink sex appeal – flat, thin body always 60% revealed by low-cut tanks and booty shorts – but Keith personally found it a little cheesy for him to be so self-aware of it. As this thought passed his mind, the image from the thumbnail appeared, and Lance in another ridiculous get-up (a pastel blue romper with an acid-wash jean jacket over it) was grinning up at him again. Now that it was blown up, Keith could see that the unfortunate figure with their face blurred out for the question mark was likely Hunk, Lance’s proclaimed best friend since Kindergarten and primary editor for his channel.

_“Since my army of kittens has been getting quite feral recently, I thought it’d be fun to take a break and meet some of you – hopefully tame some of those hackles. This Saturday, in the U S of A’s own Austin, Texas, I’ll be having a super here, super queer meet-up at the 5 Lions Gay Bar at 3PM. I’m buddies with the guy that owns the place-”_ another shameless wink “- _if you know what I mean, so even my kittens who aren’t 21 yet can come to take some photos! It’ll be super fun and hopefully, for my fellow Texonians, will be a nice way to escape the heat_.”

Keith was only mildly surprised by Lance living in the same city as him. Lance, always the complainer, never let his audience forget about the heat when it came to videos posted anytime between March and October. Videos between October and March involved complaining about how winter just wasn’t “winter” without snow.

A quick mental check of Keith’s schedule informed him that yes, once again he was working a shift on Saturday during the exact time of Lance’s meet-up. Even if he could go, he wasn’t entirely certain that he would want to go _see_ Lance in real life. Something told him his trans angst and jealousy would just make the occasion salty at best, aggressive at worst. Maybe they’d cross paths some other time – although Keith doubted someone in his usually frumpy get-up would get more than a cursory glance from a magnetic force like Lance.

Lance continued, interrupting Keith’s pity party to provide updates on merch restocks, his recent round of finals (although it was now July, Lance went to a quarter system school that started and ended later than usual, putting his finals in the third week of June), and some plans for what he called a “post-pride funeral” where he was going to ceremonially bury his trans pride flag, to unearth it three days later “a la Jesús” he claimed. None of it Keith would classify as “Big News”.

Then Lance stopped talking. Which happened so rarely that Keith tapped the screen just to make sure his app hadn’t frozen. Some murmuring in the background of the video that sounded vaguely like a deep voice asking, “you good, man?” and Lance immediately sat up, smiling, but this time in a more meaningful way than his nearly-permanent smug grin. He nodded once, took a breath, then stared directly into the camera.

_“I really want to thank you guys for all the love and support you’ve given me. Sometimes I really wonder if I deserve having these views, these subscribers…and honestly, I don’t think I do. You all have done so much for me – because of you guys, I was able to afford top surgery last year and still be able to support myself during recovery even though I could barely sit up. You’ve helped me get through some really dark times by just turning on a livestream and laughing with some strangers. I appreciate it more than you can ever know.”_ Keith felt an illogical urge to move his gaze elsewhere to avoid Lance’s deep, personal, stare. “ _Now, for my big news…”_ Lance bended offscreen and rustled through what sounded like a drawer full of miscellaneous items and produced two folded pieces of paper, looking like they were folded in three to be fit into an envelope. “ _I have my two letters of rec right here and I’m making an appointment to see a surgeon about getting SRS._ ”

Keith gawked, jaw literally dropping in disbelief as Lance sighed like a heavy weight was thrown off his back. Some intentionally-cheap-looking graphics swung around the screen and a muted fanfare and applause sounded in the background. The tirade ended with a characteristic _mewl_ that Lance often used when pretending to interact with his “kittens” AKA audience.

Lance continued talking, saying that it was still a lengthy process of deciding what kind of SRS to get, when to get it, where to get it, and other factors Keith’s brain wasn’t really processing. In his mind, he was still stuck on Lance getting SRS.

Not wanting to pause the video in case Lance revealed some other shocking truth, Keith swung off the futon into his room, clutching his phone and bowl of Kraft dinner carefully. He thrust the top of his laptop open so fast that it made a concerning _THUNK_ noise when it hit the wall behind his desk. Still in a daze, Keith’s gloved hands danced across his keys in typing Lance’s channel name and searching through old videos until he got to ones from 4 years ago, when Lance was high-pitched, perky-titted Gloriana just coming out as trans.

Keith must have watched that video tens of times in the past. Something about Glo- Lance had resonated so much with Keith, when he himself was still going as Katherine. This teenage trans boy was incredibly determined, ranting about using “whatever fucking bathroom he damn well pleased!” and refusing to bind because “real men get to have their boobies breathe!” While Lance’s vocab at the time was a little course, his defiance of not just typical cisgender norms, but gender binary roles for trans people as well, had inspired Keith enough to begin his own transition process and come out to Shiro.

Just as Keith remembered, the old, grainy video ended with Lance grinning at the screen, same cocky look in his eyebrow, just with hair down to his shoulders. With a perfectly-timed hair flip, Lance narrowed his eyes and said, “You’ll see. I’ll be the best man you’ve ever seen. And I won’t even need a dick.”

\----------

Keith sat at his laptop for a few minutes afterwards, vaguely hearing Lance’s ending card from the 2017 video as he considered Lance changing his mind. _He didn’t even know the guy. Just because he’s been watching his videos religiously for 4 years doesn’t mean that Lance owes him anything - OBVIOUSLY._ His thin fingers swirled his spoon around his nearly-empty bowl of Kraft. _Maybe Lance realized that, despite his best efforts, the dysphoria of his genitals had become too great and he DID end up “needing a dick”._ Keith’s teeth groveled at his full, chapped lower lip in budding frustration. _But didn’t Lance know people like Keith, who wanted to try doing it without medicine, without outside help, without a dime to his name NEEDED to know people like Lance could exist and be accepted and be happy?_ He glared down at the frozen image of current-Lance, wearing cat ears and miming a paw with his hand at the end of his end card.

Regardless of the rational, Shiro-influenced part of his brain screaming alternatives from all around him, Keith stood up, shaking with a mixture of rage, betrayal, and many other feelings that were too uncomfortable or uncommon to identify. Carefully, he picked up his phone, exited YouTube, and selected a name from his contacts. After a few rings, a bored voice answered.

“Hello?” it drawled.

“Rolo. It’s Keith. Can you trade for a Saturday afternoon shift?”


	2. Rivals...or something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone who's been leaving kudos and comments!! support from readers always helps me get the creative juices flowing, and I really appreciate it!  
> TW for some minor violence and misgendering in this chapter

Admittedly, Keith was aware that stewing over Lance’s videos, both old and new, only allowed rumination to further clutch him in its grasp, yet some part of him could not stop obsessively combing through Lance’s catalogue. First, it was related videos to the two he recently watched. Then his entire transition playlist. Eventually, Keith just left the videos on autoplay as he went about his business: brushing his teeth, “cooking”, working out. The days between when he saw Lance’s announcement and the meet-up grew fewer and fewer and the anxiety of both meeting and confronting an internet personality for the first time just contributed to his grumpiness.

“ _Someone seems tense!”_ Shiro had remarked, five minutes into their skype conversation the day of. “ _You would think a day off work and constant studying would have relaxed you – but then I guess you wouldn’t be my brother, huh?_ ” Keith smiled distantly and nodded, already deciding he wouldn’t share his plans with his brother, on the off-chance Shiro was able to talk him into not going to the bar and doing...whatever he was planning on doing.

As Keith slowed his motorbike into a parking space behind the bar, his mind focused the memory of Shiro’s angelic, fatherly stare over one shoulder and Lance’s taunting smirk over the other. _Maybe_ he would just go, stand in the crowd as Lance said whatever one says at local YouTube meet-ups, then go home. _Maybe_ seeing the boy would get some of his rage out of his system. Remind him of Lance’s personhood, reasons for changing his mind about SRS. All the logical thoughts that he wasn’t capable of thinking. Keith tried convincing himself he’d stay peaceful, despite being so overheated that he opted to leave his leather jacket at home and immediately tied his hair back into a low ponytail the moment his bike leaned onto its kickstand.

Glancing up at the 5 Lions, Keith wondered how he’d never noticed such a gaudy location only twenty minutes from his place. The sign was vastly oversized – taking up much more space than the small awnings of establishments to its right and left. Under the stylized name of the bar were what looked like five roboid lions in primary colors flying through space. Of course, like a beacon warding off curious straights, the lions were in a formation that gave the impression of an arced rainbow. Still not sure whether to classify the place as a dive bar or not, Keith opted to open the seedy front door with his elbow, just in case.

Given that it was only 3PM, Keith wasn’t too surprised that the bar only had a few customers, looking like they were there primarily for some afternoon snacking. There wasn’t any sign of Lance’s cohort or a rabid mob of his “kittens”, but there was a dull noise of excitement bouncing through the walls from somewhere nearby. Maybe Keith had overestimated Lance’s popularity (or the man had boasted about his fanbase too much, one of the two).

“You with those internet freaks?” purred a deep voice to Keith’s left. He turned to find a bartender, almost stereotypically wiping the counter with a rag. Way too muscled to be wearing such a small tank top, the bar’s logo cast its shadow of a rainbow from one end of his pecs to the other. Keith tried not to dwell on how flat and toned he looked compared to his own body.

“Uh, yea.” Keith figured it’d be better to adopt himself as part of the freaks than try to argue for the sake of a group he had never interacted with in real life. “Am I early or something?”

“Hardly,” the beefy bartender scoffed, looking somewhat peeved, as if this was just one of many similar conversations he’d had that day. “They’re in the party room in the back.” Another scoff within two sentences – probably some kind of tactic to stave off boredom. “Some party.”

“Thanks,” Keith replied, already turned and moving towards signs highlighting the back room. A list of possible rental uses including karaoke, birthdays, and performances was hastily stapled to the thick curtain separating the room from the rest of the bar. Now that Keith had approach, he could hear the muffled chatter of multiple high-pitched voices.

“No problem, miss,” sounded the bartender as Keith pushed through the curtain. Almost immune at this point to such mindless comments, Keith just mentally filed the offense away, thinking to himself, _we all know who picked this bar anyway_.

\----------

Keith could hardly believe how noise-canceling the heavy black curtains had been when he entered the room to find maybe twenty, thirty girls ranging from age 16 to 20 giggling and squeaking from all corners of the room. Most of them had their phones out – expensive, top-of-the-line technology encased in plastic pastel kitties and aliens (a common LanceTrance motif). Many were even dressed head-to-know in Lance’s merchandise – one girl even wearing an ugly meme-ified Lance flag across her shoulders that Lance sold for April Fool’s Day. Refocusing himself on his mission, Keith pushed back the reminder that all those flag’s proceeds had gone to an organization that helped fight conversion therapy in the Bible Belt. It still looked garish.

Given that the girls were focused first on their phones, and second on their small cliques, Keith was easily able to navigate among them to the center of the room where most of them converged. Pushing away an errant French braid from some bubbly brunette, he saw the team of LanceTrance, talking, laughing, and signing autographs like they were famous. To be fair, they were probably the most famous people the attendees had ever met in their short lives, Keith included.

The easiest to spot was Hunk Garrett, Lance’s best friend and editor, who had the presence of what Keith would imagine the love child of Maui from Moana and Kristoff from Frozen would look like. With dimples. He so infrequently appeared in front of the camera that Keith was surprised to see how shaggy his hair had gotten since he last surfaced, and noticed that it was only held out of his eyes due to a headband he tied around his forehead. Next to him was a dark-skinned woman with large hooped earrings, her arm around Hunk’s waist. Although Keith himself had never seen her before, he inferred her to be Shay, Hunk’s long-time girlfriend that Lance consistently poked fun at him about whenever he thought the two had done something particularly cute.

In front of the happy couple was a notable nonbinary youtuber that often collaborated, or more accurately, was roped into Lance’s videos – Pidge Gunderson. They had a channel called PidgeonMaster that had a few thousand subscribers (many due to Lance’s influence) in which they played video games and showed off rom hacks they did with old software. Sometimes they even reviewed ARG’s, special games and stories that crossed the line from fiction into reality, that they found particularly spooky. Keith had watched every one of their ARG videos and was now under the impression that they only knew so much about the topic because they themselves were secretly a puppet master of some game out there (hence, the channel name).

Finally, receiving the most traffic from the rabid teens, was Lance Sanchez, grinning his perfect smile while writing autographs, looking over a shiny pair of Ray-Ban’s.

Indoors.

True to form, Lance was wearing sunglasses indoors.

Before he could make his way forward to view the rest of Lance’s expectedly-ridiculous outfit, a small elbow got jabbed into Keith’s ribs, screwing up his breathing for a tic and forcing him to pause and make sure he could still feel his lungs inflate and deflate steadily. Sensing that the crowd would not die down for at least a little while, Keith retreated to the side where a small snack table was set-up, complete with a cake with Lance’s meme face from the flag printed on it. Someone had taken the knife meant to slice the cake and menacingly carved a pentagram into the forehead, then stabbed it deep into the creature’s left eye.

“Enjoy my work?” came a smarmy voice from below Keith’s shoulder. After flipping to both his left and right, Keith found Pidge looking unimpressed below his eye level. “C’mon, dude, I’m not that short.”

“Dude…” he parroted, almost reminding himself. Sometimes being surrounded by a mob of cisgender women messed up his gender compass a little.

“Unless I’m mistaken?” Pidge asked, eyebrows furrowed this time to convey seriousness. Keith was glad he could appreciate firsthand Pidge being around to act as the straight man (no pun intended) to Lance’s buffoonery.

“No, that’s right,” Keith replied. “You’re Pidge. PidgeonMaster. You do work on internet cryptids.”

“Great identification skills there, Sherlock. And if you’d seen my videos at all, you’d know they’re called ARG’s, not ‘internet cryptids’.”

“I’m aware,” Keith muttered, crossing his arms to shut himself off. “It’s just that cryptid research is what paved the way for creepypastas and ARG’s to exist in the first place. I think the name should respect that.”

“I’m aware,” Pidge repeated back, a teasing grin much fiercer than Lance’s spreading across their face. “Here, let me get you a suitable piece of cake.”

Fittingly, after a bit of prying the knife and careful slicing, Pidge deposited the piece containing the pentagram onto a flimsy paper plate and handed it to Keith. For themselves, they selected the decimated eye piece. The two sat carefully to the side, at a safe location to observe the cacophony without having to be molested by it.

“So, I assume you too are a teeny bopper here to sell your genitals to Lance’s fame?”

“Not even a little bit,” Keith replied, honestly. He was twenty, an entire year past his teens.

“Then what brings you here?” Pidge inquired, sucking some stray icing from the prongs of their fork.

Keith tightened his grip on his own plastic fork, suddenly feeling a little silly for even coming to this meet-up. One of Lance’s inner circle was here, ear offered, and Keith could easily list his grievances and get some calming words that might help him settle down. Pidge probably wouldn’t even find it as stupid as Keith himself did. In fact, it would probably be the optimal strategy for minimal awkwardness – getting the message to Lance without having to direct antagonize him in front of a slurry of fans.

Still, an irrational grudge boiling in Keith’s gut forced him to just say, “I need to ask Lance something.”

“Oo, mysterious,” Pidge drawled, gaze surveying the masses before them. “I’m not sure when you’ll get a chance to butt in though. The lionesses are ravenous today.”

“I thought they were kittens.”

“Maybe online, but not IRL at the 5 Lions gay bar,” Pidge replied with the solemnness of a protagonist looking out over the expanse of zombies encroaching on them and the supporting cast.

After some comfortable minutes of silence and sugary-goods eating, Keith was able to strike up some interesting conversation with Pidge (or maybe vice versa). As expected, their interests lined up a lot at the intersection of disturbing mythos and shitting on shitty cis people, devolving quickly into some unwarranted comments judging some of the girls surrounding them. But only the ones who squealed in fetish-like delight with their friends after finding that Lance’s top surgery scars were visible under his shirt in their fan photo together.

Two pieces of cake, three handfuls of pretzels, a cup of unfortunately un-spiked punch, and an hour later, both Keith and Pidge were seemingly out of energy to have any more fierce discussions regarding things like the recent ARG Petscop. Keith didn’t even have the motivation to continue providing decisive evidence that Petscop was truly haunted to spite Pidge’s theory that the creator was trying to make a commentary on society’s neglect towards different forms of abuse. Disgustingly domestic, Hunk was off to the side, modestly whispering to his girlfriend as they shared a piece of cake after sharing a quick, introductory nod and handshake with Keith. Worse yet, it seemed like only a third of the fans had left and Lance was still swarmed, magnetic and nearly shining despite the grossness of the venue filled now with body-heat. Or maybe shining from the sweat, who knows.

Now that the crowd had thinned a little, Keith could see Lance’s full outfit. On top: a nearly-but-not-quite-opaque spaghetti strap top that shimmered periwinkle in the dim backroom lighting. On bottom: thin jean shorts that may have been long enough on someone with slightly shorter legs, but on Lance, just looked like rugged blue boxer-briefs. The pièce de résistance was a pair of strappy tan sandals – the wedged heels of which elevated Lance an extra four inches off the ground. As always, he still oozed disgusting masculine attractiveness.

Almost sensing Keith’s piercing gaze on him, Lance perked up and turned to point his winged eyes back in his direction. Now able to Lance’s whole face, Keith saw a butterfly barrette pulling a clump of his bangs smoothly out of his eyes and into a curl slightly above his ear.

“I think now’s an appropriate time to talk to him,” Pidge said, noticing the sudden tension between the two. Keith was already out of his chair, fists clenched so hard he heard a _pop_.

With each step Keith took, another small group of girls sensed the impending dangerous atmosphere and meandered backwards or to the snack table (to Pidge’s chagrin). Lance kept his gaze level, but gave off an air of further haughtiness the angrier Keith felt, which of course made him even angrier.

By the time their faces were only two feet apart, Keith’s forehead hurt from the deep scowl forming and Lance seemed as cool and collected as he did in one of his videos.

“Have we met before?” Lance started, voice still betraying some pep despite Keith’s looming figure. “You seem a little- “

“Where do you get off?” Keith hissed, his own voice only low because he knew he wouldn’t be able to control it otherwise.

“Now, that seems like kind of a personal question.” _A fucking joke_.

“Bullshit!” Keith spat, eliciting a twinge in Lance’s expression – his raised eyebrow lowered to a slightly smaller angle. Keith spun around, gesturing at the girls who had now fallen silent in anticipation of the argument. “ _This_ is who you’ve been talking to? A bunch of bitches who think it’s cute how one of their own looks cute as a man?”

“I don’t think you should call them bitches,” Lance said carefully, seemingly interested in where Keith was going, despite Keith himself not being super sure. Truthfully, Keith did feel bad about calling a bunch of strangers “bitches”, especially in front of them, but feeling bad was for later.

“Don’t you think there are people out there who need some honesty – some truth?” Keith continued, stepping closer to yell further into Lance’s face. “Or do you not even think about the trans guys that need to hear that voice – your voice – telling them that it’s okay if they’re poor, or have shitty parents, or still don’t know what the fuck they’re doing because they’re valid no matter what! Don’t you think that has some kind of purpose?!”

Lance blinked once, twice, then squared his jaw, resolving himself into an aggressive, superior glare. “Who the fuck are _you_ to come in here and bust my ass over shit you don’t even know the half of?” To punctuate the question, Lance brought a palm forcefully into Keith’s shoulder, forcing him back and almost into a girl that was standing too close. “I bet just because you’ve seen a few of my videos, you think you know everything about me, huh? That you can just come here and boss me around because you don’t like all the decisions I’ve made?”

Knowingly missing the point, Keith replied with a shove of his own, barking, “I’ve seen every _fucking one_ of your videos!” At this comment, Lance paused, momentarily betraying thoughtfulness as he glanced around the room. Now that Keith was aware himself, he noticed his fellow fans seemed smaller in number, like some had fled the scene, while the remainders had out cell phones, appearing to record the encounter. Pidge had relocated themself next to Hunk and Shay, the former interested and the latter two appearing in shock.

“At least I don’t look like some fat-ass emo Demi Lovato wannabe!” Lance hissed, eyes skating down and up Keith’s figure, intentionally trying to antagonize some kind of body issue. Instantly, Keith found himself on top of Lance, landing only a single punch before Lance caught his fists in his palms and struggled, trying to push the boy off. While Lance was certainly taller by an inch or two, and had muscle Keith knew from his channel was a mixture of T and classic weight training, Keith’s weight was too centralized for him to pry off, leading the two into a grunting match with little movement aside from the strain of their arms against each other. The punch didn’t seem to do any damage aside from force Lance’s eye closed slightly and bloody his nose – although, from Keith’s experience, once the endorphins were over and balance restored, Lance’s entire eye region would probably balloon up into a dark violet mess.

Around them, more girls were scrambling to get out, some even calling for the bartender and one even whisper-shouting to her mother in fear over the phone. Above the din, a hearty cackling noise could be heard that Keith easily identified as Pidge, loving every second of this show. Shay sat alone, hands over her mouth and following a figure that was now quickly approaching Keith from behind –

“Hey!” Hunk shouted, grabbing Keith by the elbows and easily prying him off Lance. Keith’s legs stubbornly kicked the air above Lance but only managed to toe gently at the bottom of his wedges, which had slid at awkward angles. Briefly, Keith wondered if the fall had caused Lance to hurt his ankle at all. “What the fuck! Lance, why do you always have to antagonize people?” Hunk sounded exasperated, as if playing the role of bodyguard for Lance Sanchez was old hat by now.

“Are you kidding me?!” Lance whined, bouncing up to his feet, albeit wobbly, and gesticulating wildly. “He totally started it!” To punctuate the point, he poked his index finger onto Keith’s nose, eliciting an instinctual growl from Keith and an instinctual finger retraction from Lance.

“What’s going on back here?!” the booming voice of the bartender sounded, shifting everyone’s attention to the door. Behind him, two police officers came in, followed by a few crying girls and some incredibly pissed-looking mothers. Of course, Lance began by shaking everyone’s hands and introducing himself, blood _drip-dropping_ occasionally onto his tank top.

\----------

Shockingly, the police were pretty respectful and calm compared to the bartender, who uttered multiple slurs of various kinds as the crowd exited the building. After interviewing so many young girls, some of which did incidentally look more masculine than Keith despite their difference in gender identity, the police inevitably addressed Keith as “Miss”, and to avoid the hassle of correcting them, Keith just calmly answered their questions.

He wasn’t sure how he had gotten himself into this. Actually, no. He was completely sure. He had intentionally ignored his Shiro-shaped conscience that was desperately pleading for him to not make an appearance at the meet-up, and he went anyway knowing full well the kind of personality Lance had and how easily it set him off. Sometimes at home, Keith would be watching a video one second, and desperately cleaning off sprays of beer from his laptop keyboard the next because he crushed a beer can in sudden rage. Yet, his opinion of Lance himself had remained at worst neutral and at best positive, maybe even one of admiration. Even now, standing a few sidewalk squares away from Lance, who held a hand delicately to his eye and answered questions of his own, Keith felt a little star-struck just being in the same world as him. Maybe just a little too late though.

“That was some crazy shit you pulled,” Pidge’s lilted voice sounded from behind him. Keith turned and abruptly had to squint and shield his eyes from the swirling red and blue lights behind them. Pidge made no move to make the conversation visually easier for him. “I agree, Lance is kind of an ass but I don’t know how I feel about some lunatic fighting him for no reason.”

“I had a reason,” Keith muttered, mostly to convince himself.

“Yea, yea,” Pidge replied, waving their hand as if the conversation was already becoming boring. “You’re just lucky he’s not pressing charges.”

Keith’s eyes opened wide, despite the piercing lights, and he leaned in towards Pidge, disbelieving. “He’s _not_?!” Keith had already resolved to push worrying about the repercussions of his actions when he got his court order, or when he got kicked out of his online school, or when he got fired from his job. He chanced a look at Lance, who was incidentally also glancing his way, a sour pout on his lips and a sassy bend to his bony hips. If Keith was in a better mood, he’d say Lance was trying to impersonate a Kardashian, and succeeding handsomely.

“Nope. And I mean, let’s be real, he definitely egged you on.” Pidge pretended to check their nails, despite them being obviously short and bitten down near the quick. Maybe Lance’s dramatics were contagious. “Hunk agreed, and luckily Hunk often serves as Lance’s moral compass. Also, Lance asked if I could track the web to see if any of the girls’ videos have been posted yet – this might even be good for views.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Keith said sarcastically, half-believing himself. Once again, a comfortable silence sitting next to Pidge. Only this time he didn’t get the pleasant sensory experience of a sugar-dipped cake, but the stinging of the claw marks Lance’s perfectly manicured nails left on his hands. Eventually, once the police seemed to be done, they came to confirm to Keith what Pidge had told him – no charges, but he may want to take a few anger management classes. There was also a joke about toning down the hormones, which left Keith wondering if they thought he was a particularly PMS-y woman or a T’d up trans dude. Despite himself, he found it ironic that he was neither at the moment.

“Hey!” called a voice, and Keith looked up again to find Lance, now with a few drops of blood on his shirt and a few more wrinkles between his brows, coming over to him. He wasn’t expecting Lance to try and deal payback the moment the cops left, but he bent his knees slightly in a subtle ready position regardless. “You better be kissing my ass from here to Sunday for the number of headaches I just solved for you.”

“I’d love to but it looks like your ass already has a cue a few hundred teenage girls long.”

“Jealous?” Lance sounded like he was only pretending to goad him, really just furthering the conversation enough so they could have a real talk about this.

“Not even a little.”

Just as he did right before he tackled Lance, Keith felt scrutinized as Lance inspected Keith – this time seeming to look past his appearance and seizing him up as a whole person.

“I heard those cops say some pretty shitty things to you. Why didn’t you call them out?”

That wasn’t a question Keith was expecting, which he hoped didn’t show too much in the rise of his shoulders. He lowered them quickly, hoping it appeared as a shrug. He wasn’t even sure how Lance heard the conversation in the first place when dealing with his own interrogation. “I don’t know. Didn’t seem like it was worth the effort at the time.”

“So, you’ll fight me for some kind of…weird personal vendetta against me, but you won’t fight cops that blatantly misgender you? You told them your name was _Keith_ for god’s sake!”

“Uh, of course not? They have guns and shit. And transphobia. Doesn’t sound like a good combination to me. And it’s not a personal vendetta! ...I think.”

Lance frowned and Keith felt like a toddler who broke the rules, waiting for a parent to lay down a punishment. Despite Lance’s thin frame and wiry personality, Keith felt small in front of him. Maybe that’s why Lance elected not to press charges. To unleash some other horrible evil onto him.

“What do you think about coming on my vlog sometime?”

_What._

“What?!” Keith exclaimed, physically unable to hide his surprise this time. Judging by the jerk of Pidge out of the corner of his eye, they weren’t expecting this either.

“Well it wouldn’t have to be a vlog episode…” Lance trailed off, forgetting his aggression to tap his chin and stare dreamily into the sky. “Maybe it could be a game episode, or one of those viral challenges…” His eyes flitted back down. “How are you with spicy food?”

“Alright I guess? Wait- what – don’t change the subject! Why are you asking me to be on your channel?”

Now it was Lance’s turn to shrug, looking utterly bewildered. “Why not?”

“Why n- because I punched you?!” Keith looked at Pidge in distress, hoping they’d back him up on how inane this idea was. Instead, they seemed thoughtful, pulling out their phone and tapping wildly.

“I guess from your perspective that seems like a negative,” Lance started, leaning forward as if trying to explain something simple to a small child. “But people _live_ for competitive spirit. News shows always get better ratings when people with different opinions start bickering. All protagonists have antagonists. YouTube and the streaming world act the same.” Lance leaned even closer, and Keith internally winced at the red already bleeding into the thin skin surrounding Lance’s eye. “And besides, something about you seems so…opposite of how I usually think. You’re kind of unpredictable, but in a different way than I am when I ‘spontaneously’ blow up my microwave on a cooking segment. We could be…rivals, or something.”

While Keith was still reeling, Pidge pulled him over by the shirt sleeve to force him to watch something on their phone – a fairly good angle of Keith and Lance straining against each other on the greasy bar floor. Keith had to admit, he looked pretty badass despite his wide hips and long hair. If nothing else, he had gained an affirming image of his own backside. “See? 20k views already, and this is just one girl posting on the LanceTrance subreddit. The comments are calling you ‘Mystery Man’ and hypothesizing who you might be and why you have a grudge against Lance. This could be good for us – _really good_.” Keith could practically see dollar signs spinning in their eyes.

“Well, Mystery Man?” Lance placed his hands on his hips, leaning more impossibly forward that his face hovered menacingly over Keith’s. From this close, Keith could see past the blooming bruise on Lance’s face and practically count each of his long, curled lashes. Some of Lance’s eyeliner was smeared a bit and Keith had an urge to check his glove to see if what was missing was left as evidence on himself.

A vague memory of Shiro encouraging Keith to make friends boomed in the back of Keith’s mind. His guilt for ignoring his brother’s deeply-instilled rational earlier was the basis for Keith now mumbling, “Uh, sure?” The gravity of the past two hours suddenly dropped onto his shoulders and Keith felt in a daze, seeing everything speed up around him. Sometimes when things got to be a little too heated, he just…went on autopilot to try and catch up.

Following the affirmation, Lance looked thrilled, Pidge laughed to themself, Hunk showed up asking for an update on why they were buddy-buddy now, and in an instant the three of them (as well as the families and police) were gone. In Keith’s hand was a scrap of paper with an e-mail address and a phone number.

The former was labeled “ _For business:_ ” and was obviously the business contact e-mail for Lance’s channel; the latter was labeled “ _For pleasure:_ ” with a curly _;)_ below it. Uncertain or unwilling to determine what that meant, Keith shoved the paper in his pocket, keyed up his bike, and went about ten miles per hour faster than he needed to get home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was surprised at how long this ended up being, but I guess once I got in the groove I just couldn't stop typing  
> Please let me know any thoughts or concerns you have!! I LIVE for comments <3


	3. Joining a Cult

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey i'm a little drunk and a lotta angsty bc I got my first binder today and MAN did I think it would be better than this BUT enough of that here's another chapter bc writing this fic makes me feel better about everything (as do your guys' comments and kudos <3 y'all have no clue how much they mean to me)

It was obvious Lance had never been punched in the face before, as Keith could tell his eye was still slightly swollen and very purple, indicating he hadn’t iced it enough once heading home from the meet-up on Saturday. The dark splotchy colors made Lance’s blue irises appear icy in comparison as they scanned Keith’s face up-close.

“That should do it!” Lance set down the make-up brush, finally allowing Keith the pleasure of breathing. Instantly whatever thick powder Lance applied on his face to prevent “the shinys” flew up into Keith’s nostrils, causing a flurry of sneezes. As expected, Lance did not reply with a “bless you” and instead busied himself with his own make-up (starting with heavy concealer around his eye).

At first, Keith was hesitant to contact the e-mail on the slip of paper, concerned it may have just been an elaborate scheme to serve him a civil suit for damages to Lance’s primary asset (his pretty boy looks), but after some pleasant correspondence with Hunk, he figured he could spend his limited free time at least sitting in to _watch_ them film a video. Of course, when he arrived at the ramshackled off-campus house in which Lance, Hunk, and Pidge resided, he was quickly guilted into starring in it himself. Something about Lance wanting to get both sides of the story.

“I was thinking of titling it ‘All the answers to the fateful encounter at the 5 Lions bar!’” Lance chimed, now leaning over Hunk’s broad shoulders as the editor fiddled with some recording software.

“A bit too long. Plus, it doesn’t incorporate the word ‘twink’ and you know how- “

“Ugh, I know,” Lance grumbled, crossing his arms and leaning against Hunk’s desk chair. “Would it be so bad to lose a couple of views just for the different wording though?”

“I know it makes you uncomfortable, but the numbers don’t lie,” Hunk replied, casting a glance up at Lance apologetically. “It’s way more than a _couple_ of views. I’m happy to name it whatever you want, though. Pidge isn’t here to badger you for it.“

“No, whatever, we’ll twink it up,” Lance sighed, pouting slightly.

Now that it was explicitly mentioned, Keith simultaneously realized (1.) how often that word showed up in titles, thumbnails, descriptions, and tags for the vast majority of Lance’s videos and (2.) that he had never heard Lance refer to himself in that way, even as a joke. Keith would have asked if there was any particular history behind the word for Lance, but he knew bringing it up would just open the door to discuss Keith’s _own_ misgivings about gender roles and identity.

Throughout the exchange, Keith half-paid attention and half-surveyed the room. The house the collegiate teens were renting was small, but still had enough rooms and hallways that _house_ still seemed like the correct classification. From what Keith could see when he entered, the downstairs consisted of a living room like Keith’s in furniture quality (old, uncomfortable-looking, incredibly inexpensive) with the primary decoration being a plethora of pillows and blankets ranging from a grandma-ish quilt to a body pillow from a gay dating sim Keith remembered hearing about online. A tiny kitchen that was clean aside from a shelf of foodstuffs in an organized mess was in the back. Up the stairs were a smaller bedroom, door shut with a vicious “CISGENDERS KEEP OUT” (likely Pidge’s bedroom) and a large master bedroom that had beds for both Lance and Hunk, with a heavy recording set-up facing Lance’s half of the room.

At first though, Keith had difficulty in determining whose bed was who’s in the master bedroom. One was a simple twin with rumpled, gold sheets that looked like they had seen better days. A few discarded pieces of clothing practically acted as a cover, as the actual comforter seemed to be barely hanging on to a rear corner. A modest bedside table confirmed, with a half-empty Cheez-It snack bag and a photo of Shay, that this was Hunk’s side of the room.

Lance’s bed, on the other hand, was, like the man, a queen. The sheets and covers were pressed and folded perfectly, which would have reminded Keith of the sterile quality of a hospital were it not for the pastel blues, pinks, and purples that made up a spiraling galaxy on the bedspread. Compared to Hunk’s side of the room, which had only a calendar on the wall, Lance’s walls were so garishly decorated with cutesy posters and photo frames that Keith was surprised the whole wall hadn’t ever gone up in flames due to the sheer balls of such a fire hazard. Keith recognized the pristine quality from the background of Lance’s videos, but he had always figured it was just specially arranged for filming, not like this all the time.

While Hunk typed, then paused, then typed some more at potential names for his video file, Lance glanced over at Keith, either not aware of or not caring that Keith was acutely aware of this stare. The two had still not discussed their scuffle at the bar, and Keith was somewhat glad for it. Of course, the moment he arrived he did what he thought was the reasonable thing: apologize again and offer to talk about what happened with Lance one-on-one. And of course, Lance was _not_ having it.

“ _No! Nono! Ssshhh nononononono!”_ Lance had shouted, shoving a soft palm over Keith’s lips the second the question of discussing what happened left his lips. “ _I want to hear the whole thing later. No spoilers_.”

Keith wasn’t sure what kind of “spoilers” discussing his weird betrayal issues would cause, and he only now began to wonder whether the video he was here to take part in was involved in some way. Hindsight being 20/20, he realized he probably should have asked what kind of video this was going to be, especially given the sensationalized title Lance had suggested earlier.

Even _more_ especially because, while Keith was distracted by his own thoughts, Lance had begun shucking off his oversized college sweatshirt and delving into his closet. Most distractingly, below the outer layer was a crop top, exposing the lean curve of Lance’s lower back and the shadow of his ribs over a flat stomach. Keith tried to tell himself that the words “Trans Man Barbie” only came to mind out of jealousy for Lance’s seemingly perfect body, not anything more.

“I just got the _best_ idea for an outfit!” Lance chirped, muffled enough from the closet door and Hunk’s headphones that his buddy probably didn’t know what he was responding to with his non-committal grunt. In a matter of seconds, Lance had pulled on a metallic baby blue button-up, buttoned the garment up to his neck (an uncharacteristic sign of modesty), and slipped a clingy cardigan on top. As Lance turned and noticed Keith’s eyes on him, he jumped, screeching, “Wait, don’t look!” and dove back into the circus he called a closet. Keith glanced down at his own attire – all black, skin-hugging, aside from a loose red flannel shirt tied 90’s-style around his waist. Even with Lance’s staggering view counts, he couldn’t be bothered to make himself appear any more presentable.

“All done,” Lance announced, resurfacing, now with a pair of smart-looking glasses in vintage circular frames. They reminded Keith of a pair one of his teen coworkers got at Forever 21 for two bucks, because looking like a grandma was apparently “sooo in these days, you just wouldn’t _understand_.”

Now suddenly able to acknowledge Lance for reasons beyond Keith’s understanding, Hunk swiveled around in his expensive-looking, yet worn desk chair and cracked his knuckles. “Alright. Ready for your ‘interview’?” The question was accompanied with air quotes and a lopsided grin thrown Keith’s way.

“An interview? Is that all you wanted to do?” Keith sighed, grimacing at Lance and then curbing his animosity by physically turning his gaze to the camera. Maybe he could rationalize hating the viewers for his own mistakes rather than Lance and finally make a friend like Shiro wanted him to. “Do we really need this kind of spectacle? We could just talk like normal people.”

“What’s the fun in that?” Lance asked, continuing quickly without an answer, “You’ve seen my videos – it’s all about the _fun_.” The last word was purred as Lance descended onto his bed and tapped a spot next to him. “C’mere, it’d be weird if only one of us sat in a chair.”

“I just don’t see how anyone would find me entertaining – would find THIS entertaining.” Keith cursed himself for not mentally correcting himself sooner as Lance’s expression fell from determined to pitiful then determined again. A strong finger shot out to point at a shelving unit by the camera set-up, which Hunk was now moving into a position nearer the bed to get a better angle on the two subjects.

“Do you know what that is?”

“No,” Keith lied, recognizing the shiny plaque on the shelf from a video a few months back that he was particularly proud of Lance for.

Lance’s eyes said _bullshit, you said you’ve watched every one of my videos and I believe you_ , but luckily his lips only said, “that’s a silver play button. I got that for having a hundred thousand subscribers. That takes a lot of work – knowing your audience, showing them what they want to see, treating them like family and keeping them close.” Lance looked contrastingly fond and fierce as he continued, “I know I seem like a dumbass, but when it comes to my kittens, I know what the fuck I’m doing.” He leveled his gaze back at Keith. “Now sit down and let me interview you.”

Keith gnawed at the inside of his mouth for a second, not sure why he was delaying at this point, then finally made a move to sit next to Lance. The mattress seemed to hold him carefully – incredibly soft and downy. Thoughtlessly, he considered what it would be like to lay down on it right then, a foot away from where Lance sat.

“We good to go, Hunk?” Lance asked, holding up a sparkly pink hairbrush Keith hadn’t noticed before. A crude drawing of a microphone was taped to the back of it, but even this detail was made on high-quality sketch paper and was taped to the edges with efficiency. No detail, even a meme-ish one, was lost on Lance.

“Yep, we’re good,” Hunk repeated, retiring to his desk chair and forcing his headphones on. After a bit of wiggling to prevent the handle from pushing hair into his eyes, Hunk signaled a thumbs-up and Lance instantly arched into a posture Keith had only seen in war movies.

“Hey kittens~” Lance crowed, twirling the microphone-hairbrush (micro-brush?) skillfully in his hand like a baton. “I know it’s been a while since we’ve met – I’ve been recovering from some…injuries,” Lance paused to swipe a finger over his healing eye and throw a sickening glance Keith’s direction. “As many of you know, I was mercilessly assaulted at my recent meet-up in Austin, but after calming the assailant down and having a reasonable discussion, I found many of his ideas quite interesting.”

 _Bullshit_ , Keith nearly shouted, only stopped by the harsh red beam of the camera reminding him that he essentially agreed to being cast out in front of Lance’s entire audience, regardless of whether Lance would be speaking the truth. Plus, the exaggerated roll of Hunk’s eyes indicated that the segment may be due for extended editing.

“We actually have him here, and I’d absolutely _love_ for you all to meet him. Why don’t you introduce yourself, Keith?” Hunk fiddled with the camera, likely panning out to fit both boys into view.

“Uh…I-I’m Keith,” he floundered, thankfully remembering to keep any identifiers like last names out of the picture. Lance blinked, seemed to realize Keith didn’t know what to say, then smiled thoughtfully.

“You can tell he’s not as much of a talker as he is a fighter,” Lance purred, back at the camera for a split second until his attention snapped back to Keith. “So why don’t I start with the elephant in the room – why did you crash my party?”

Keith blanched at the ridiculous question being asked in such a serious, _Law and Order_ -esque tone. He had to admit, Lance’s whole ensemble and posture conveyed the air of a fierce investigative journalist searching for the truth, with the only exception being it was _Lance_ underneath the get-up. Being on the other side of Lance’s whimsical costumed characters from his channel seemed even more fantastical with the boy right in front of him. If he wanted his conversation with Lance, he’d have to play along with the charade.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a party. Seemed more like the premiere to some new gay Twilight spin-off to me with all the underaged girls running around,” Keith muttered, interrupted slightly by a giggle from Lance that he couldn’t quite tell was genuine. “Basically, I was just pissed, and I guess in hindsight I didn’t really have any right to be.”

“Pissed about…?” Lance leaned in, embracing the drama of his interrogative presence and making Keith feel even more like a criminal.

“Nothing important. Just that I’m a long-time viewer and I just…I don’t know.” Keith wondered how long he would be able to put off telling Lance’s bespectacled eagle eyes the truth about his nonsensical SRS expectations.

“Well that’s some new news,” Lance remarked, leaning back and crossing his legs elegantly, playfully bumping Keith’s knee with a socked foot. A quick glance at the video feed playing back on the monitor behind Hunk told Keith that this action was not for the sake of the camera.

“How _long_ is long-time?” True to form in his typical sexual humor, Lance emphasized the L in “long”, shooting a wink at the camera. How Lance’s teen audience’s parents didn’t see Lance’s content as borderline pornographic was beyond him.

“Okay, well it’s not ‘new news’, because I told you at the bar that I had seen every one of your videos,” Keith deadpanned. “I’ve been watching since your ‘Roxxxy should have won’ video.”

“Rox-“ Finally, Lance appeared off-guard. “That was like…four years ago.”

“Uh, yea. So that’s how _long_ long-time is.” Keith tried to cross his own legs to mimic Lance, but ended up having to settle for more of a masculine ankle-over-the-knee pose and cross his arms. The combination of his thick thighs and restrictive skinny jeans was threatening his composure, but he took it from Lance that sometimes you could fake it ‘till you made it.

Lance inspected Keith’s face, like he wasn’t sure if he was answering seriously, and seeming satisfied enough, he continued, “my horrific drag phase aside, what about my recent announcement video made you angry, as a long-time viewer?”

“How’d you know it was because of your SRS video?” Keith glanced horrifically at Lance’s computer, whirring far away under his desk. What kind of viewer statistics was this website providing their content creators with?!

“I didn’t, I just figured it did. Like I said in my incredibly-thought-through title announcing both my meet-up and the SRS, it was big news. Sometimes when you hear big news from someone you’re close to, it can elicit some strong emotions.”

“What, are you my therapist?” Keith asked (as if he had patience enough to have his own therapist). “I was just pissed that you had been this genderqueer icon for so long who didn’t care about being the ‘right’ kind of trans and I just…” Realizing he overshared somewhat, Keith deflated a bit in mood and stance – his man-spread leg slid off his knee. “I felt like you were betraying us trans guys who couldn’t go and get SRS. Or top surgery. Or hormones. Because there’s a lot of us out there and so few feel comfortable revealing ourselves on camera when we don’t seem ‘boy’ enough.”

Lance opened his mouth to reply (more likely, interrupt), but stopped suddenly halfway through, as if Keith’s words had notified him of a problem he’d never considered before. Then, suddenly, he stood and began pacing across the room, humming to himself and shoving his fists into the thin pockets of his cardigan. Through the fabric, he beat a slow rhythm against his hips as he moved that subtly matched his tune.

Just when Keith thought he had officially thrown his life away to join a cult as Shiro always feared for him, Hunk took pity and announced, “Don’t worry, he does this when he needs to think of a good comeback or response. I’ll just edit this out in post.”

Keith’s eyes followed Lance from one corner, to Hunk’s bed, near his spot on his own bed, then to the desk. “Is he…gonna be okay?” Keith asked quietly, not sure if talking too loud would disturb him. He’d only personally known the guy for a few hours, but he already knew that a quiet Lance was…eerie.

“Eh, probably,” Hunk replied, shrugging. At Keith’s concerned look, he chuckled and added, “he’ll probably just be another sec- “

“I’ve got it!” Lance suddenly exclaimed, scurrying back to his outline on the bed, smoothing his clothing and straightening his glasses. Before Keith could adjust back into the faux-interview setting, Lance reached out and grabbed one of Keith’s hands in both of his. “You’re right.”

“I…am?” Keith fundamentally did not agree, but maybe Lance’s momentary tirade caused him to have a lapse into agreeableness.

“Yes. There really _aren’t_ enough trans guys out there that talk about this kind of stuff. That are willing to be publicly themselves while still pumped full of estrogen poisoning. While I do really _need_ bottom surgery for my own sake - my own dysphoria - I’m so glad people like you are still around to inspire young, gender-questioning people.”

“People…like me?” On second thought, maybe Keith had short-circuited instead. Lance’s pointed gaze nailed him to the spot – eyes much fiercer than they needed to be if this conversation was just for his ‘kittens’ sake. Keith tested Lance’s grip by flexing a pinkie and was alarmed to find that it did not budge a single nanometer under Lance’s vice-like grasp.

“Again, yes. Since I can no longer be a resource in that way for that part of my audience,” somehow, Lance still had enough room to * _squeeze*_ Keith’s palm further, “would you be willing to join my channel? And _be_ that resource?”

Now, as a lover of all things grotesque and creepy, Keith had done his fair share of late-night readings on cult leaders and serial killers. Part of what made these diabolical humans so successful in their evil actions were their god-given gift to sway the masses – shoot someone a look and capture their dedication and admiration. Universally beautiful, charming, magnetic individuals. Keith had always wondered what such people could do if they chose instead to do good. Now, looking into the ocean blue of Lance’s eyes, he felt like he knew.

“Of course,” he breathed, wondering how he could have lived with himself if he hadn’t. In the periphery of his attention, he noted a surprised sigh. Apparently, Hunk was not expecting this exchange to occur.

“Fantastic!” Lance chirped, pumping his hands above his head and taking Keith’s blood-let hand with them. The solemnity of the moment he had just created appeared utterly lost on him. “With that deal out of the way, how about we get to know you some?” Seemingly from nowhere, Lance produced a set of index cards hooked together by a small keychain. Thankfully, he dropped Keith’s hand in favor of holding onto the cards.

“First…what’s your favorite color? You seem to be awfully fond of the color of the night…”

“It’s red, actually,” Keith answered, now feeling fully in control, conscious, and surprising himself by feeling a genuine will to answer Lance’s questions. Maybe Shiro’s concerns were justified and he _had_ joined some kind of mind-altering YouTube trans cult.

If that was the case, maybe joining a cult wasn’t so bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know your thoughts (positive or negative) in the comments!!! also is anyone else a fan of the My Favorite Murder podcast?? that's what gave me the idea of the Lance/cult leader parallel lol


	4. Moral Support

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys I am so thankful for all the support and feedback this fic is getting!! honestly writing this is so cathartic and healing and... fun?!?! I really enjoy writing this and I'm glad you guys are enjoying reading it. :) anyway here's another chapter that got too long rip

Now that Keith had committed himself to three things: a job, an education, and whatever bullshit Lance’s YouTube channel counted as, he found that his already-limited free time was completely used up, now narrowing in on his treasured 5 hours of sleep. Keith had been certain that no one would care about his sudden presence on the channel and he would be able to get away with an occasional cameo or two just as “the trans dude that punched Lance one time because the poor guy just wanted bottom surgery”. Instead, every time he tried shutting down one of Lance’s new video ideas, Lance instantly shushed him, claiming Keith had become an overnight fan favorite.

Apparently, Lance himself had become a bit disconcerted by the exaggerated cis-female quality of his audience, and since the arrival of Keith, comments from actual trans guys or other genderqueer afab folk had increased. Plus, Keith sensed a bit of gratitude on the two editors’ parts as well. On days where Keith visited and it was only Lance and Hunk, or Lance and Pidge, the latter in each situation seemed thankful to have another person to help ground Lance when his creative prowess started spiraling too far into the clouds. Sometimes Hunk even let Keith watch over his shoulder as he used his editing software to add in jump-cuts and match the audio when it got de-synced. Keith wondered how many lessons would warrant an additional bullet point on his resume.

To summarize the past two weeks of Keith participating in Lance’s videos:

  * Playing Mario Party with the gang, despite never touching the game before nor knowing the other three well enough to contribute to the conversation. Despite being mostly silent aside from a few teasing comments towards Lance, Keith ended up winning handsomely, to Lance’s chagrin.
  * Attending Lance’s aforementioned “Pride Funeral” in which Hunk and Keith dug a small hole in the backyard of the rental house while Lance commentated, staying blissfully unsweaty and comfortable. Once the grave was ready, Lance used his old girl scout skills to fold his trans pride flag into a triangle and buried it (AKA put it in the hole for Hunk and Keith to cover up).
  * Attending Lance’s “Pride Resurrection” in which they unearthed the flag, only for Lance to realize his only trans pride flag, which cost around $60 due to its regulation size, was covered in staining mud and holes worn through by hungry insects. The video was never posted but Hunk kept the footage for the next outtakes video.
  * Doing a Top 10 Cryptids video with Pidge on their channel, both arguing and collaborating with their different knowledge bases and skill sets regarding ARG’s versus real-life cryptids.



In fact, the only two videos Keith _hadn’t_ appeared in on the channel after the fake interview were likely only due to their personal nature for Lance – a “story time” about an annoying client at his summer internship and a make-up tutorial, both of which Lance didn’t even need Hunk’s assistance for, aside from some post-production editing work.

Most of Keith’s interactions, though, were still primarily with Pidge and Hunk, making his and Lance’s relationship more of just a public affair. He still wasn’t sure if Lance was just using him to give his channel an extra edge after he attacked him, but Keith was enjoying the company enough not to leave the project. Another few videos or so and Keith may consider telling Shiro he had made some new friends (but no need to get the man’s hopes up if Keith was just going to inevitably fuck it up in a matter of weeks).

Regardless of how much, or little, he was enjoying his time with the LanceTrance team, Keith was glad to finally have a Sunday morning with no worrisome assignments, no early shifts, and no video shoots. Instinctively, his body had shot up in bed around 7AM, only to realize that he had nowhere to be and could let the soft _patter_ of the rare July rain outside drift him back into unconsciousness.

Unfortunately, this dreamless pleasure was sorely interrupted by the clanging of his cell phone. After five minutes of hazily pawing at the buttons on his device, “shit” and “fuck” being uttered more times than he thought a morning-zombie like himself could articulate, he shut down the troublesome caller and collapsed back onto his pillow. This time, it took about 15 minutes to fall back asleep again.

Leaving Keith only five minutes of restless sleep before a stern knocking sounded on his door.

“What the fuck is it now…” he growled, fingers clawing in anger at his sheets. A quick moment of ignoring the noise only caused it to return, louder this time. Keith bent harshly at the waist and rose from his bed, glancing at a discarded binder on the ground and electing to ignore it as well, hoping he wouldn’t have to interact too much with the troublesome visitor to make it necessary.

Another _slam bam bang!_ on the door just before Keith could get to it only increased his sleepy rage. Whoever was stealing his Sunday morning was going to fucking _pay_.

Keith wrenched his front door open, quietly proud of his arm strength, and snarled, “who the fuck are you and why the hell are you bothering me at 8AM in the goddamn morning?”

However, all he _actually_ was able to say was, “who the fuck-“ before Lance, drenched in rain water, face lit up like a Christmas tree despite globs of eye make-up smearing down his cheeks, scurried inside under Keith’s arm.

“Wha- Lance?!” Keith swerved around, wondering if he was still asleep and dreaming Lance had showed up at his apartment. If he was awake, then he certainly was hallucinating – there was no reasonable explanation for Lance, someone he had barely interacted with privately, one-on-one, at all with, AND who shouldn’t know his address, to arrive at his doorstep a sopping mess.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Lance remarked, hobbling around Keith’s living room, seemingly unaware of the water he was dripping everywhere. He did, however, grab a tissue to wipe the rain-laden mascara stains from his eyes. The result was somewhat racoon-ish.

“Hey, you like Scott Pilgrim?” Lance asked, holding up a forgotten DVD of the film Keith had left on his coffee table. “I know our kind is supposed to like Wallace because he’s gay but Knives was the most badass, I. M. _H._ O.” Keith stood motionless, dumbfounded, and a little numb in his shoulder from still holding the door open.

Lance continued his meandering, and now Keith was just lucid enough to make out a disgusting _smack_ of Lance chewing a wad of gum. He continued commenting on the some of the details of Keith’s home, while criticizing most of the others, and still gave no indication of why he was here, ruining Keith’s morning.

Finally, Keith steeled himself, shut the door, turned around, and opened his mouth to sling the most horrific verbal abuse Lance had ever received in his life. Of course, he was interrupted by Lance having a thought and the most opportune time possible.

“Oh shit! You probably wanted me to take my shoes off. Soooo sorry about that,” he trilled, shifting back to Keith’s side to toe off his muddy boat shoes. Luckily, Keith couldn’t afford a carpeted apartment and didn’t shell out for a rug so any mess-solving would be just a Swiffer away. A Swiffer away, but still on an otherwise-free Sunday morning. Keith clenched his fist, willing it to not reproduce the barely-perceptible bruise on Lance’s eye. Realizing that a fist might make it even easier, he restrained his arms entirely by crossing them over his unbound chest.

“…Lance.”

“Yea?” Lance asked, now taking it upon himself to peek into and then enter Keith’s bedroom, forcing Keith to slowly stalk after him.

“What. The _fuck_. Are you doing here.”

“Oh!” Lance exclaimed, stopping in his tracks and forcing a demonic, sleep-walking Keith to bump into him. From where Keith’s nose hit Lance’s neck he could smell a sweet perfume pleasantly infused with the rain. “You right.” Lance twirled around and grabbed Keith’s upper arms, which were still tensed from their crossing and will to not cause the man across any bodily harm. “We’re going shopping!”

Lance probably expected Keith to have another pause, shock&silence moment at this outburst, but now that he had dealt with a certain degree of Lance’s hijinks, he was prepared to offer an immediate, “Like _hell_ I am. Get the fuck out of my apartment and go bother someone else. This is my only Sunday off and some _twink_ isn’t going to barge in and ruin it.”

The moment Keith used the word, Lance’s carefree demeanor froze slightly, like a computer stuck on the last screen it had open despite crashing internally. The tiniest grinding noise told Keith that Lance was no longer chewing, but grinding the gum in his mouth.

Keith, being too tired to resist a sad Lance, hoarsely sighed out a “sorry”, and moved brusquely past Lance into his room to check his phone. There weren’t any notifications, but he pretended like there were as a salty Lance began doing rounds again, this time in his miniscule bedroom. At least the offensive remark made him quiet…if Keith was okay with that.

A few minutes in, Keith gave up on feigning interest in his phone and stewing in awkward silence (aside from the occasional drip from Lance’s wet hair), and flipped back onto his bed. Crushing the base of his palms into his eyes to rub out some sleep and the thought of what he was about to ask, he croaked, “why are we going shopping?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Lance piped up, whipping around to face Keith fast enough that water from his body struck Keith like small wet icicles. “Hunk and I had this whole script ready for a skit about battling in these big lion mechas that we were gonna do in the backyard – it would have been sooo campy, but so great.”

“The classic LanceTrance style,” Keith supplied dryly, inspecting the pattern in his ceiling intently.

“Exactly! But with this rain we couldn’t do it, and _also_ because of the rain, Hunk had to go drive Shay to work since she couldn’t ride her bike without getting her uniform wet. And of course, I’ve done too many lone-wolf vids recently so I can’t just do _another_ back-up smoky eye routine because honestly, how many times can I do it before it gets to be a little dumb? And and AND, I can’t even do an FAQ because I would have needed to collect questions from the kittens first. So I’m in a bind.”

“You can’t be in a bind, you’ve had top surgery.” Lazy pun, Keith would admit, but he could make lazy puns when the safety of his home was being invaded.

“Lazy pun, but still pretty decent,” Lance agreed, stopping his pacing to smile thoughtfully at Keith. Once again, the boy exuded an intelligent smugness that Keith resented for being so good at hiding his true thoughts. A moment later, though, Lance’s expression betrayed pure shock, cheeks dusting a pale red as he focused on something next to where Keith lay on his bed.

“What are you looking at?” In response, Keith only got a finger pointing at his set of cheapo drawers made of transparent plastic from Walmart.  He followed the direction to realize that the only sex toy he owned, a large red dildo, was resting in the top drawer. Keith had forgotten he kept it there for ease of access.

“Oh god,” Keith growled, pulling his pillow over his face to muffle a frustrated scream. He didn’t deserve this on a Sunday. Lance must be some kind of demon harassing him over past sins.

“Keith Kogane…” Lance mumbled reverently, taking steps towards the drawers. “I never would have thought…”

Now expecting Lance’s particular brand of bullshit, Keith was ready to smack Lance’s hand away as it reached to open the top drawer. “Don’t even think about it, asshole. Whatever happened to discussing shopping? That conversation was so much easier to zone out during.”

“Okay, first of all – rude.” Lance tutted, rubbing his sore hand and holding it close to his chest. “Second of all, _please_ tell me where you got that thing. It does have a vibrate function, right?” Instead of reaching, Lance opted to squat to get closer to eye-level with the scarlet phallus. “It seems too big to not have a motor in there.”

“Don’t take me answering your questions as me saying that I am okay with this line of discussion,” Keith started, glaring at Lance’s form below out of the corner of his eye. “But no, it doesn’t. Vibrators seem too expensive – I only even have that one as a gag gift.”

“Pun intended?” Lance chirped, head popping up next to Keith on the mattress like an eager puppy.

“Pun _extremely unintended,_ ” Keith replied, pushing Lance’s face away. Lance must have also become used to Keith’s behavior at this point, because the use of physical force was, this time, unquestioned.

“But they make teeny-weeny vibrators that can just go on your finger!” Lance held up his middle finger as an example, not seeming to realize the implication the gesture gave. “They cost like ten, fifteen bucks, and are small enough that your honored guests wouldn’t have to see them on brazen display.”

“I don’t think you’re an honored guest if you just barged into my bedroom.”

“Not the point – you are living a sad, emaciated-clit life, my son.” Before Keith could bark _don’t call me son_ , Lance continued, “But get your clothes on, we’re going shopping.”

“Again, for wh-“

“For a HAUL video, duh!” Lance rolled his eyes, like Keith should have known all the intricacies of Lance’s channel plans by now. “Even if the weather’s shitty, we can go buy a fuckton of clothes and then come back and do a video showing off what we got. Plus, lots of places are having summer sales right now – Hollister, Banana Republic, Urban.”

“As I just asserted, Lance, I don’t have the kind of money to go splurge on fancy brands I don’t need. And I doubt you do either.”

“What if we also go to…Target?” Lance purred, eyeing Keith carefully. “I have some coupons. You wouldn’t even have to get anything yourself if you don’t want to. You’ll be there for…moral support!”

Keith would have been fully prepared to shut down any idea of Lance’s if the words “Target” and “coupons” had not appeared in that statement. Instead, he found himself just grimacing up at Lance from his bed, knowing he had been thoroughly played.

“That’s what I thought.” Lance bent down and surprised Keith by throwing his cast-aside binder back in his face. “Now put this on. What would the internet ladies think about you going out like _that_ , Mr. Double D?”

\----------

Keith didn’t realize his actual role on this trip until Lance had returned from trekking through the aisles in Target and expected Keith to sit by the changing room and comment on every piece of clothing he had picked out. By the way the employees outside the changing area gave the two of them the side-eye, Keith guessed that Lance wasn’t supposed to be bringing in upwards of 20 items into the room. Regardless of the rules, Keith didn’t understand why Lance bothered with so many clothes when he already had such a fully fleshed-out wardrobe from what Keith saw of his closet and didn’t need to spend any more money on fashion. To make matters worse, he _specifically_ chose a changing room that didn’t have a mirror, forcing Keith to give an opinion on everything instead of directing Lance’s gaze back at himself.

“You’re forgetting this trip is a _business expense_ ,” Lance had responded before entering the changing room when Keith voiced his grievances. Keith didn’t know the intricacies of national tax code, but he was at least 90% certain that isn’t how it worked. “Plus, mirrors are just…weird, okay? Like why do I need to look at myself all the time? Gross.” Before Keith could mention how out of character this was, the character himself shut the door to the changing room in his face.

As Keith kicked his legs on the chair across from him in the waiting area, he didn’t have a clue what kind of clothing Lance had selected. The boy had grabbed things too fast, almost like he was keeping the selection a secret as he went. Keith glanced around, wondering what other sorry bastards were dragged to Target on a dreary, yet peaceful, Sunday morning. There were two older men, sitting near each other at the furthest end from the changing area with the stoniest faces Keith had ever seen. Given the two chatty older voices from adjacent changing rooms, Keith figured they were husbands of friendly housewives who were here for support, and possibly silent friendship between themselves – something Keith could understand and admire.

The only other individual was a sketchy-looking teenage girl scrolling dully through her phone, wearing a dark, black and red outfit that matched her black hair with a red streak through the course bangs hanging over her brow. Occasionally, she glanced at a changing room where girlish humming and singing was coming from, the tune of which reminded Keith of Lance’s humming habits during his make-up videos. It occurred to Keith that Lance had been showing less and less of this musical side over the years, acting bashful when people asked him to sing when he once grabbed microphones with pride.

Unfortunately for Keith, Lance barely gave him a chance to check his own phone between reveals of new clothing pieces. To Keith’s dismay, it seemed that Lance was trying each piece on individually and not trying to kill multiple birds with multiple stones by doing entire outfits at a time. To Keith’s further dismay, Lance was not satisfied with Keith giving a cursory glance and a slurred “s’looks fine,” in response to everything he tried on.

“Keith, I need to know your _actual_ opinion, okay?” This time Lance was wearing a slightly longer version of jean shorts than the two he had tried on previously. “I can’t half-ass a haul – what if a brand representative sees my review of the products and offers me a DEAL?”

“You’re too capricious to tie yourself down to a lame company like Levi’s, Lance,” Keith responded, sighing at the still-too-large pile of untouched clothing behind Lance in his changing room. “You forget that I know a lot more about you than you know about me.”

“Well, that’s what _you_ think,” Lance huffed, turning and shutting the door behind him. “I also want to make sure the stuff looks good too, y’know? I have an image to maintain and shit!”

Keith chewed a bit on the inside of his cheek for a few minutes as Lance shuffled around behind the door. Eventually he decided on the careful response of, “Lance, you and I both know you’ll look good in any of these clothes, so me giving a play-by-play just seems silly and a waste of time.”

“Ha Ha, Keith, very funny,” Lance murmured, now making a great deal of noise indicating a more dramatic wardrobe transformation. “You won’t be saying that in a second!”

“I really doubt it…” Keith trailed off, glancing up at the door where the singer girl had stepped out, a teenager with a short, nearly bowl-cut, brown bob and a pastel blue sundress. She held a lacy white umbrella over one arm and a few pieces of similarly soft-colored clothing over the other, but she still immediately leapt forward to hug the edgy girl Keith had been sitting across from and pepper kisses on her forehead. The husbands at the end of the hall seemed mildly unnerved, but thankfully made no comment.

“Ready to go?” the dark girl asked, receiving an energetic nod and _mmhmm_! from the other. The two walked off, the dark girl’s arm around the pastel girl’s shoulder as they went. Keith had to admit, they seemed pretty cute. Was having a cute shopping day at Target required for cute couples or something?

“Earth to Keith?” Lance called, snapping Keith’s attention back to Lance, who had, as expected, changed his entire get-up to make a point. What this point was, Keith did not have the brainpower left to wonder about. Instead, his mind was entirely encompassed with processing the image in front of him.

Lance was wearing an extra-large dark blue galaxy tee tied off at the waist to expose a small sliver of midriff. Covering up the rest of his abdomen was a pair of high-waisted black shorts with four buttons going from crotch to ribs. The worst part were the tightly-woven fishnet stockings under the shorts that would have exposed Lance’s entire leg if he wasn’t wearing the pair of white crew socks he came here in underneath.

“Wah…” Keith uttered, not certain what Lance expected him to say, _how_ he expected him to say anything when Lance had just intentionally adorned himself in what Keith could only identify as sex-laced club attire.

“I _know_ ,” Lance grumbled, exiting the changing room to look at himself in the full-length mirror in the hall, and giving Keith the opportunity to observe how the shorts rode up slightly more when Lance leaned onto one leg. “This is like, my _dream_ outfit and it’s not right at all.”

“Well duh,” Keith practically whispered, forcing his eyes to look at Lance’s through the mirror. “You’re too indecently hot to walk the streets.” Keith believed too much in honesty (and was _honestly_ under a bit of a spell right then) to worry about how the comment sounded like blatant flirting.

“Once again, ha. Ha.” Lance leaned further to the side, apparently trying to jut his ass out. “I don’t have the hips NOR the ass for high-waisted shorts, Keith. And fishnets just make my legs seem even more long and knobby.”

Keith glanced at the mentioned body parts and would admit that Lance wasn’t completely delusional – the boy’s entire pelvic region was flat, front and back (Lance had mentioned in a far-gone video that the packers trans guys used to create the impression of a dick in pants made him feel like he had a latex fetish), and his legs seemed miles long. However…Keith would never in a million years consider this a _problem_. Wasn’t the whole point of transitioning to look _less_ curvy? Also, someone as effortlessly attractive as Lance should not be having these kinds of thoughts over such an obviously well-fitting outfit, especially an outfit Lance just claimed to love the style of.

“I even tied this shirt up as high as I could without showing my scars, but my stupid fucking torso is still as short as shit…damn it,” Lance continued muttering, stretching in several ways to better his view of his body. “ _This_ is the reason I fucking hate mirrors in changing areas. Probably should have gotten a smaller shirt, but I guess old habits die hard.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Keith remarked, himself wearing a hoodie, despite the humidity, to hide the awkward bump his binder couldn’t hide. Some of the bitterness Keith felt from Lance’s SRS video started stirring again in his gut – did Lance have any idea what kind of first world trans dude problems he had?!

Lance sighed dramatically and shut his eyes tight, the worry lines seeming unnervingly unnatural on his normally sunny countenance. “Maybe I should have just stuck to the men’s section. Who am I even kidding, ri-“

“Get whatever the fuck clothes you want, Lance, okay?!” Keith snapped, tempering his glare to keep it from striking Lance too forcefully through the mirror. “You obviously like the ones you’ve got on right now, and you look like a goddamn model in them, perfect body or not. Just stop this stupid self-deprecation shit, Jesus.” Pushing himself up by his knees and sliding his headphones into his ears, he spat, “I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll meet you in the check-out line once you’ve sorted this shit out.”

Lance remained speechless, a full red blush apparent on his face, shoulders, and the thin sliver of rib exposed between the shirt and shorts. Keith brusquely exited the changing area, shooting his death glare at the two older men who were now setting their judgements upon him.

“Not a fucking word,” he whispered to them as he passed.

\----------

Admittedly, Keith _did_ have to pee.

After exiting the men’s room and wandering around the toy section (the plastic samurai swords may or may not have piqued Keith’s interest), Keith got a text from Lance telling him, “ _all done, heading to check-out_.” Keith took a few deep breaths, reminding himself that Lance’s life need not impact his emotional state this easily, and headed to the front.

Of course, it being a weekend in the summer, the check-out stations were all full of winding lines of small families. Just to get towards the front, Keith had to dodge a small army of fussy elementary schoolers running from a severely overworked suburban mother. Lance was at the end of one of the shorter lines, hugging a few garments to his chest. When Keith reached him, he chose not to mention the familiar outfit included in Lance’s haul.

“Got everything I needed,” Lance said, shifting awkwardly to allow Keith to stand next to him in line and avoiding his gaze. “Should be a good video.”

“Here, stop trying to hold the whole damn pile yourself,” Keith muttered, grabbing some of the garments from Lance’s arms. “I told you when we got here we should’ve gotten a basket.”

“My arms are perfectly capable of holding all my spoils!” Lance piped up, springing back into his usual fervor quite easily, yet not reaching to taking any of the clothing back. Idly, Keith noted that the clothes in his arms were still a touch warm from Lance having just tried them on.

“Y’know, Keith, you’re right about one thing,” Lance said out of the blue once they were a few people closer in line.

“Only one thing?”

“Yes. You really do know me more than I know you.” Lance shot one of his trademark toothy grins at Keith over his shoulder. “I guess I _do_ tend to overshare on the channel.”

“Okay…” Keith only had a fair guess for where this was going. “You want to know something?”

“Yeah! I mean, sorta,” Lance shrugged as he moved to start loading the clothes onto the check-out belt. “At least about your trans life, since that’s kind of the reason why we met.”

“Oh.” Keith wracked his brain for the hundreds of memories, good and bad (mostly bad), relating to his “trans life” over the past few years. What story was Lance expecting – the first time he tried on a binder and practically passed out from forcing a size small over his chest? Trying to convince his foster mother before Shiro’s bio mom to switch from “Katherine” to “Kath” to “Keith”? Every small heartbreak he felt whenever Shiro accidentally messed up his pronouns early on and obviously felt _so_ horrible for fucking it up every single time?

“You’re still gonna have to narrow it down a little bit. My trans life is kinda, like, my whole life,” was what Keith decided on.

“Hmm…” Lance wondered, rudely ignoring the friendly check-out girl as he swiped his card when he should have inserted it. “I’ll just ask my biggest question right now, I guess. Why not get top surgery?”

“The money, duh,” Keith responded, grabbing Lance’s credit card and forcing it into the chip reader, shooting the girl behind the counter a sympathetic glance. “Way too fuckin’ expensive.”

“But there’s insurance, and doctors would _definitely_ advocate for you,” Lance persisted, now electing to annoy the girl by grabbing items she reached for to bag them himself – well-known gross misconduct at a Target. “There’s gotta be more to it. You’re too…angsty to not have a better reason.”

“Didn’t realize I had to have any special kind of reason.”

“Ugh, c’mon, you know what I mean. You don’t have to get pissy every time I say something a little bit off, okay? You know it’s kind of my thing by now.”

“You can’t just call something shitty you do a personality trait when really you’re just too lazy to change,” Keith remarked, grabbing the bags and glancing at the door, which confirmed the rain had let up since their entry. “But yes, I do have more complex reasons than just money for not getting surgery and hormone treatment. It’s just that money is the simplest answer.”

“Okay...then what is it?!” From his position in front of Lance, Keith could hear the question carried some labored breathing with it, showing that the other boy was rushing to catch up with Keith to match his brisk stride out of the store.

“You’ll just have to get to know me a little better and find out.” Giving Keith enough time to mentally steel himself for the process of figuring it out too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for reading!!! like comment and subscribe to get updates whenever i post a new vid ;P  
> EDIT: OH I ALMOST FORGOT: does anyone recognize the lesbian couple that was also at the target??? they are literally my relationship goals so i couldn't resist the easter egg  
> EDIT 7.21.17: Hey yall i'm really sorry I haven't posted the new chapter yet (supposed to be posted yesterday but whoops i'm a piece of shit). lots of really shitty anxiety/sensory problems lately that make it almost impossible for me to write coherent sentences for this fic. i may have to skip an update and just post the new one sunday - sorry again


	5. Seeing Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry again for how late this is! my anxiety's really relapsed recently and honestly it's been a struggle just to get out of bed and take showers everyday lol so I've had to move some things around for the posting schedule  
> ANYWAY I'm feeling much better now so here's another super long chapter!!!

“Ugh, you’re such a buzzkill, Keith,” Lance sighed, leaning forward from his perch on the stainless steel bannister separating their part of the line from the mass of other people behind them.

"I told you, this is an important problem set for my class. I feel asleep right before the last one was due so I really need this to get my overall grade up."

"Pssh, we both know online school isn't even _real_ school anyway," Lance remarked, drawing frustrated looks from both Keith and Hunk, crouched next to each other on the lower rung of the bannister. Of course, when _they_ sat up on the top, a park attendant immediately scolded them. But when Lance does it, the teenage workers seemed considerably more interested in texting during their shifts instead.

"Lance, I'm not even going to waste my breath listing all the reasons why you're wrong and that’s stupid," Keith replied, focusing his attention back on his notebook and phone.

The din of the surrounding county fair attendees already made it hard enough for Keith to focus on the small text of his phone screen supplying the problems and the mental math required for the work itself. The sweltering heat of July in Texas, let alone being outdoors surrounded by what seemed like the entire population of the greater Austin metropolitan area, made Keith so hazy and his body so laden with sweat that his arm had left an imprint on his notebook from the moisture. The addition of his period this morning, which normally didn’t cause painful hot flashes, yet did today, AND his only clean binder being an old one that he got before filling out with some muscle only worsened the encroaching stuffiness of the fair. The binder, which he now remembered was the same one Shiro had urged him to just get rid of when it stopped fitting right, constantly gave him side-stitches and forced him to sit at perfect 90-degree angles just to breathe. At the time, he figured it would stretch a bit. It had not.

At least he looked really flat in it.

He only had himself to blame – this time, Lance didn’t come barging into his home (which he now found out was possible because Pidge had his address from when he ordered LanceTrance merch a while back). Instead, he received a fairly normal “ _hey!! You busy next Tuesday?_ ” from the boy a couple days ago while he was on break at work, feet sore from standing in place bagging groceries for hours. Since they finally had had a bit of a bonding moment over the shopping escapade, they had started texting somewhat regularly, so Lance knew exactly when to text Keith so that he’d be on his usual break time.

 _“I’m not, but I could switch shifts with someone_ ,” Keith had replied, surprising himself with how eager he was to see Lance again. He wondered to himself if this is what a crush was like, then realized he had just been without a close friend for too long since Shiro left. Plus, you probably weren’t supposed to have multiple aggressive meltdowns at people you had crushes on – at least not past the 5th grade or so.

 _“Great! We’re all going to the county fair,”_ Lance sent back. “ _Doing some pop-up trans topic interviewing with the locals, but also going on some rides and just chillin’!!!”_

Keith hadn’t realized he was smiling at Lance’s alarming overuse of punctuation until his co-worker Rolo, who was on break too but sat a safe three-table distance away in the otherwise empty break room asked, “what kid’s got his hand down _your_ panties?” (After that comment, though, it _did_ still take him a few minutes to process that Rolo was referring to the uncharacteristic grin burning his cheeks.)

In fact, all the constant texting was what led to Keith falling asleep during his last assignment and got him to the point of doing a problem set in the middle of the line for the “Gut-Buster”. After going back and forth with Lance about whether flowers had souls until the early morning, he had forgotten to set/slept through his early alarm telling him to finish the rest of the assignment and submit it by 10AM.

Thankfully, Hunk was waiting with them in line for company despite having no intention of going onto such a vomit-inducing ride and could hold onto their stuff while they got rattled around. Keith tried glancing at Hunk out of the corner of his eye but black blobs had starting ebbing into his vision from the mixture of heat, constriction, and all-around sensory overdose. He bent down to get some blood pumping back to his brain, but the movement forced the air out of his abdomen, causing even _further_ visual distortions, now with added gasping. Upright and dizzy it was, then.

“I think…I may need to stop now,” Keith got out, not quite ready to admit something might actually be wrong with him, but okay with admitting the universal fact that math-y physics was hard. “Way too hot, loud.” He shot a look at Lance, more playful than it would have been a week ago and added, “Annoying.” In response: a cute _blep_ of Lance’s tongue poking out back at him and a classic LanceTrance wink. But this one was just for Keith.

For all Keith’s mirages teetering towards hallucination, Lance looked cool as a cucumber. His skin seemed a touch more red and dark from the sun, but otherwise he was smooth and dry. His eyelids were caked in a harsh smoky eyeshadow that, in Keith’s wavering perception, could look like sunglasses – and maybe acting like them too. His _actual_ sunglasses rested as an accessory to his outfit on top of his head, white-and-pink floral design radiant in the sunlight. A matching button-up short-sleeved tee adorned the top of his body, but only in a loose definition of the word. None of the buttons were clasped and part of the shirt was even falling off Lance’s shoulder; it was a likely culprit for what was keeping Lance coherent while Keith and Hunk died in their plain tee’s and cargo shorts.

Keith wasn’t sure if he was supposed to comment on Lance wearing the high-waisted black shorts that caught his eye at Target. As per usual, Keith had neglected to formally apologize and so had to pretend the garment didn’t exist, which was more difficult than he expected. Even without the fishnets, Keith struggled to keep his heat-laden gaze from lingering on the tight fit framing Lance’s perfectly tilted hips. If Lance was a tumblr post he wanted to reblog, he’d have trouble deciding between a “ _body goals_ ” or “ _relationship goals_ ” tag. Well, if he didn’t know of Lance’s personality, of course.

When the gang came to pick Keith up and Lance noticed Keith noticing him (he forgot to try for a second), Lance shrugged and smiled softly. “I’ve never been one not to face my fears,” he had said. A line straight from one of his videos – but it was real.

“Please advance the line,” sounded a voice up ahead, harshly gesturing for the three of them to move forward, the group ahead of them already entering the ride. Keith stood to move, much too quick, and stumbled into Hunk, who thankfully had the body mass required to stop his momentum.

“Woah, dude, you okay?” he asked, pushing Keith back onto the weight of his own feet. “You seem a little out of it.”

Keith hadn’t hit it off as well with Hunk as he had with Pidge, simply based on not having as much in common – trans or otherwise. But Keith had a lot of respect for Hunk. The man seemed to have an endless capacity to care for others and was _always_ willing to help out Lance with his next hare-brained scheme for a video, and dedicatedly edited out all the dumbassery afterwards. Now that Keith knew Lance better, he could understand why the two were friends, but he didn’t really understand what Hunk got out of it. Why put in so much effort for someone who seems so self-centered and oblivious sometimes? Then again - Keith was here too, wasn’t he?

“I’m good, great,” Keith said quickly, not wanting to cause anyone undue stress on his part. Coming here on one of the hottest days of the year, in a big crowd, in the killing sunlight, in a size small binder, on his period…all his own poor decisions. No reason to bother anyone else with them. “Just stood up too fast, got headstruck.”

“You mean headrush?” Lance offered, jumping down from the bannister and now looking concerned himself.

“Yes, that, headrush, that, exactly that.” Keith noticed he was about to start talking in circles, so he cut himself off at three “that”s. He instead focused up on the ride looming above them, now at its peak speed.

Since it was only a fair, the Gut-Buster was obviously not the safest contraption known to man. The paint was chipping in too many places to count, and the places where it wasn’t were painted over in globby new coats. However, since they were in one of the largest cities in one of the largest states in a notoriously large country, the ride was also…large. It was the height of a small Ferris Wheel, and went around in circles like one, but at a higher and more variable speed. Instead of stable riding cars, there were small, two-person cages which could freely spin in any direction as the ride jerked them up and over the hill of the fake Ferris Wheel. From Keith’s vantage point, it looked like the riders held on tight to handles within the cage and were bent in a fetal position to avoid being jostled around painfully within.

“Next up?” the ticket-taker asked from somewhere far away. Well, far away until Hunk tapped Keith on the shoulder and gestured for him to hand over his school materials. Lance had already removed his sunglasses and was entering one of the cages. When had the ride stopped to let on new passengers? When had the sun started boring a hole through his skull?

“Thanks,” Keith said to no one in particular, giving up his notebook, phone, and tickets in some order and then crawling into the small booth with Lance, who was absolutely beaming.

“Ugh, I love these things so fucking much!” Lance exclaimed, holding onto the handle with dear life as Keith clumsily shut the door of the cage. “Back when my dad didn’t work as much, he would take me and my siblings to this fair and we’d go _crazy_ on these rattle-rides. That’s what my dad called them. My mamá just calls them ‘death traps’.”

“Hmm,” was all Keith could offer, holding onto the handle as steadily as he could manage. He squeezed it in his hands. Kinda…squishy.

“Hunk’s right, you _do_ seem out of it,” Lance mentioned to himself. “Hey, mullet-face?” He reached over to slap Keith’s face slightly.

“What…” Keith drawled, narrowing his eyes in an attempt at a glare. Instead, he accidentally closed them.

“Are you _sure_ you’re gonna be ok- AAHH!” Lance started to ask, but then the ride jerked forward and the two of them were spinning.

Keith was going _up, up, up_ and _around, around, around_ , and he couldn’t stop craning his neck to the left to watch Lance, who despite his concern a second ago, was now whooping and hollering every time the ride threw them in a new direction. The dusty pink on his cheeks from before now betrayed excitement as it was spread all over his face, and his white grin was so large that Keith, had his eyes not been wobbling around in his skull, could have counted every tooth. If someone had asked him right then in his heat-induced stupor, he would have said the true thrill of the ride was watching someone as radiant as Lance get so excited.

Even after Keith’s face slammed against the front of the cage and he had to slump forward from the pain and disorientation, he was only conscious of Lance’s hands now suddenly on him, his grip shaking him, his voice asking him something.

“… _okay?”_ He heard it only faintly, and noticed offhandedly that his current position allowed limited – no, _no_ air into his lungs, which were causing a dull ache and more overtaking dull spots. “ _Damn it, Keith_ …” the voice continued.

Keith observed himself passing out, wondering and hoping that whenever he got up he’d remember the voice saying his name _exactly like that_ again.

\----------

Keith didn’t have to wait long.

“ _Damnit_ , Keith! Wake the fuck up already!” was the first coherent phrase he understood after a thin haze of mumble-shouting. Droplets of water struck him in the face, including where his bangs usually protected his forehead, and he rolled slightly on the soft surface he was propped up on.

“No…” he slurred out, glaring with his eyes closed at the being forcing him out of comfortable slumber.

“Well, I guess that means he’s not dead just yet,” came a small voice opposite of the first one. _Pidge_ , Keith’s brain supplied.

“That seems a little insensitive, but since he’s not actually dead, maybe it’s fine,” came a similar, but unfamiliar voice next to Pidge’s.

More spray-water finally forced Keith to open his eyes and grab the troublesome object. Unfortunately, with his strength completely betraying him, he only managed to slap it out of the hands of someone…now recognizably _Lance_ …looking pissed as all hell. Instead of letting Keith’s hand fall, Lance grasped it painfully hard and leaned in to talk to Keith inches away from his face.

“You _asshole_ , who do you think you are passing out on my lap in the middle of that death trap of a ride?!”

Feeling like it mattered, Keith replied, “mamá calls it death trap.”

“You bet she does, and you’re glad I only have half her genes and therefore only _half_ her capacity for fury!” Lance hissed.

Keith blinked some of the darkness out of his vision, allowing himself to focus on objects beyond Lance’s terrified expression. Hunk was in the corner talking to someone dressed in an antiquated candy scrubs uniform, who seemed more pissed than concerned. Next, Keith lazily rolled his head over to the other side, and frowned at his sudden double-vision. Was that…two Pidge’s?

“Hey sleepy-head,” Pidge greeted upon Keith noticing them. They sipped loudly on a mostly-empty fountain drink, causing Keith and the taller Pidge to cringe. The facial movement clearing his vision further, Keith now recognized Tall Pidge as being a bit more stocky and masculine – dustings of blonde five-o’-clock shadow on their cheeks. Most out of character for Pidge, this person just smiled at Keith in pity.

“Oh yea, this is Matt, my brother,” Pidge remarked, poking a thumb harshly into the Matt’s ribs and making him jump. The base, animal part of Keith’s brain made him chuckle slightly at that. For some reason, this made Lance clench his hand even tighter.

“Where…am I?” Keith asked quietly, tilting his head back to find a canvas tent above them. Gradually, the sounds of laughing children and atrocious carnival music reminded Keith he was at the county fair before anyone could ask him to speak up. Closer noises, such as the wailing of a small child receiving a band-aid in another corner of the tent, and Hunk’s tense speech over a phone began wafting in as well. In his renewed focus, Keith could now recognize the name of the person Hunk was addressing – _Shiro_?

The word triggering thoughts of _Shiro? Where’s Shiro. Shiro will know what to do, how to help_ , Keith sat up so quickly that his shoulder struck Lance in the chin, and fell even faster once his abdominal muscles remembered all their energy was used up in helping him regain consciousness. The momentum from Keith’s back hitting the thin mattress shot a dull pain up his spine into the swollen bump on his head. And an awkward _thud_ from Keith’s chest made his stomach automatically heave like he was still suffering from heatstroke in the line.

“My binder?” Keith asked, feeling suddenly exposed being in a public place with his chest unbound. His voice came out like gravel, sticking to itself. Looking down, he confirmed that he was still wearing his normal shirt, but the mounds of his breasts were covered in a floral shirt hastily piled on top. The extra layer was slightly uncomfortable in the heat, but knowing the protection was there visually calmed the flooding sensory anxiety.

“Oh, don’t even get me _started_ on the binder, you asshole!” Lance shouted, approaching more of a whisper-shout with his tone. “That thing was fucking _strangling_ you and you didn’t say anything at all!”

“It should’ve been fine,” Keith weakly protested, tilting back at Lance. Strangely, he was now completely shirtless, top surgery scars exposed – a position he rarely felt comfortable doing even at his family pool, if he was telling the truth in his videos. “It was supposed to fit.”

“Maybe before you started looking like a fucking Adonis from going to the gym every goddamn second of your life!” Lance replied, squeezing the hand that Keith forgot he was holding. Would asking him to switch hands make him angrier? “When I cut that fucking thing off you, you had these blood-red marks from all the seams digging in your skin. That shit probably won’t fade for a day or two, it was so tight. At first I thought you had fucking DIED.”

Suddenly concerned about the sniffling child several yards away from them, Keith looked back to the ceiling and muttered, “Language…” In response, Lance just grunted in annoyance and dropped Keith’s hand in favor of pacing nervously. Pidge snickered.

“Hey, Keith,” Hunk said, and before Keith could understand what was happening, his own cell phone, hot from either the sun or constant use (or maybe both), was shoved onto his shoulder. “It’s your brother, I think.”

“What, Shiro?” Keith asked, not immediately making the connection and looking around the room wildly again, knocking the phone down to his lap. Hunk kindly picked it up and opted to hold it to his ear.

“ _KEITH!_ ” came the most terrifying, but comforting, voice Keith had ever heard in his life. “Thank GOD you’re okay. You _are_ okay, right?”

“Shiro,” Keith started, smiling without restraint despite the nonchalant atmosphere he had been trying to build up around the LanceTrance team. “I’m fine. A little…out of it, but I think I’m fine. I think I got overheated. I think I maybe fucked up a little.”

“Huck said that you passed out from heat stroke or dehydration or something while _on_ a carnival ride. That that Lance kid had to carry you off the ride so they could get you to the infirmary at the fair. That it took so long to get them to stop the ride Lance had to hold you still as it rattled you around because you had already slammed your skull on the ride once and he thought you might get a fucking _concussion_.”

“His name is Hunk.”

“Yes, Hunk, sorry,” Shiro corrected, and Keith could hear a slight chuckle in his voice breaking up the anger. “What a weird name. Is he a hunk?”

Keith glanced up at Hunk, who was talking to the Pidge twins and only responded with a quizzical look to the mention of his name. “Hmm, I’d say so? He’s the big guy, do you remember?” Before Shiro could say anything, Keith added, “wait…how did you know to call?”

“You’re still logged into your YouTube on my laptop since I never watch anything and I opened it so Allura could show me a funny cat video on our day off. First recommended video was some kind of update that the video from the fair would be late because someone named KEITH was at the fair’s medical tent. Seemed like a weird coincidence, so I went into the backlog and, lo-and-behold, a Keith I know quite well has been on this channel for a few weeks now, despite never telling his one and only brother.”

“I could have other brothers, you know. My parents could have been anyone. Maybe I’m half-alien or something.”

“Not the point,” Shiro replied harshly in his _I’m not actually in charge of you but like hell am I gonna let you do something stupid_. “I called your cell until eventually Huck picked up.”

“Hunk.”

“I’m not sure he’s your kind of Hunk. At least not in the given company.”

“Shiro,” Keith breathed, feeling suddenly sober now that he had to traverse the intricacies of his relationship with his foster brother. “Remember when you were mad enough to drop what sounds like a hot date with a woman who cares about sustainability to call me multiple times to lecture me for wearing my old binder in the sun while on my period? I’d really rather not bring up-“

“You’re on your _period_ too?” Lance interrupted, pausing his pacing to exaggeratedly pull at his own hair. “Dude, you picked the absolute _worst_ recipe for summer fun.”

“Shut up, Lance,” Keith growled, curbing anything more hateful for a time when Lance didn’t carry him out of a metal death cage. He might even say thank you for that. Or sorry for the other stuff.

“Oh, is that the trans Lance?!” Shiro asked, sounding as excited as he was angry previously. “Y’know, he looked pretty cute in some of those thumbnails.”

“Oh my god why did I regain consciousness for this.”

“I’m just playing,” Shiro said softly so that Keith knew he was smiling fondly. “Trying to lighten the mood. Allura and I were scared half to death when we got no answers for a while. We’re really glad you’re okay.”

“I know, Shiro. Thanks.”

“Y’know, Allura might have some charity money-raising things to do in the U.S. in a few weeks. Maybe while she’s doing that I’ll swing by the apartment. I’d love to meet your new friends.”

“Thanks, _dad_ ,” Keith sighed heavily, pulling a cue from Lance’s hysterics. “But yea…that’d be cool.” The line was silent for a little while, and even though the noise of the tent was still deafening, especially with the team all talking at once to each other right next to him, Keith could almost feel Shiro’s firm presence there with him, quietly supporting him.

“Okay, well I’m gonna let you get back to trying really hard to not be unconscious,” Shiro said with a breath. “Thank your friends for me. I’ll talk to you later?”

“I’ll let them know. See you, Shiro.”

“See you.”

Keith reached for the phone and ended the call himself, feeling proud of himself for the movement, then took a cup of water from the side table to sip at. Everyone was still busy enough talking about different things that Keith could have a bit of alone time – not really to process what had happened, he kind of got the gist already – but to just _breathe._ And remember what breathing freely felt like. Still a bit hesitant without a binder on in public, though, he crossed his arms to pull the floral shirt closer. This at least got Lance to stop pacing and go back to sitting worriedly on the cot next to him.

And for once, Lance didn’t say anything.

\----------

Luckily, Pidge, Matt, and Hunk had gotten enough footage while Keith re-hydrated and dozed that there would be a video after all for all their trouble. Lance refused to participate when they left to go film and interview strangers around the park, instead opting to sit watch over Keith like Shiro did when he took Keith to his psychotherapy appointments. The similarity in posture got him thinking about the ways Shiro and Lance were like each other in ways he didn’t expect. Or maybe making lists comparing people was something to keep Keith calm in this crowded, smelly place. He started:

  1. Both are tall.
  2. Both have fluffy hair that curls a little if it gets too long at the nape of their neck.
  3. Both aren’t afraid to tell Keith when he’s stupid. In the tent, Lance keeps leaning over every few minutes to remind him, but he doesn’t sound angry. Just like Shiro did on the phone.
  4. Both have an affinity for Hello Kitty. (Shiro’s is more covert)
  5. Both fight really hard for the people they care about, and nothing stopped them.



Was _Keith_ one of the people Lance cared about?

Before Keith could even _begin_ to open that can of worms, Lance interrupted, right on cue. This time, instead of a “as long as you know you’re stupid, _stupid_ ,” Keith received a, “I’m sorry you didn’t end up enjoying the fair. You said you hadn’t been before, right?”

Keith shrugged. “’s not a big deal, Lance.”

“You haven’t tried a funnel cake, or gone on a bungee swing…”

“I should be apologizing -  my bullshit kept you from doing any of that this year,” Keith heard himself say. How surprisingly kind.

“Oh, pssh,” Lance slurred, the “ _pssh”_ sending slight dots of spit out over Keith’s cot-blanket. Despite this, Keith’s blood pressure remained at its healthily low post-knock-out state. “I’m taking my sisters tomorrow, don’t worry about me.”

“Okay, well.” A deep, blissfully unencumbered breath. “I’m sorry for other stuff too.”

Lance must have sensed that that was all Keith was willing to say about it right now, so he just brought a soft hand down to pat Keith’s head. “I know, mulletbreath. And I get that sometimes I can be a bit…. burdensome.” Lance’s face shifted to how it looked when he was pacing and yelling earlier, so Keith flicked his tan hand off his head to distract him.

“Aside from when you’re doing fireman carry’s to rescue assholes from fake Ferris Wheels.”

“Look, I was just really worried about you, o-“ Lance stopped, stiff, then looked outside of the tent, then checked his phone. “Eight P.M.” Either Keith had been unconscious for longer than he thought or the two had been waiting there for hours. “Keith. Oh my god.”

“’Oh my god’ what, Lance.”

“You haven’t even been on a bona fide Ferris Wheel probably, have you?” Lance bolted up from the chair he sat on, knocking it over unnecessarily, and scanned the room. The movement caused Keith to notice the fair nurses were all busy with other people or focused on eating greasy booth-food dinners. Lance leaned over Keith so close that Keith could smell the sweat that remained so hidden on Lance’s body, betraying some real humanity behind Lance’s perfectly presented image. “Do you feel awake enough to get out of here? It’s almost closing and we can still make it. The line might even be shorter and I can help you if you can’t walk super great yet.” The whole statement came out in one breathy whisper and Keith saw that Lance’s lips barely moved past a flutter as he spoke. They looked really soft despite their high speeds and the fact that Lance had forgone any gloss or lipstick for their excursion.

Maybe Keith _did_ have a crush on Lance. If he did, he’d be allowed to gawk at his lips, right? Everyone gawked at Lance, crush or no. He was too pretty not to.

“Yes,” Keith replied, not even checking to make sure his body agreed. Thankfully, Lance was kind enough to support Keith’s weight the entire way to the Ferris Wheel line, dodging nurses and team members the whole way.

\----------

“Ugh, how long does this take? I think I’m gonna be sick…again,” Keith groaned as the Ferris Wheel lurched forward every few seconds as new riders entered the car.

“I think this thing is just a little rickety,” Lance said, a smile that didn’t seem to fit the tone of his voice playing on his cheeks. “Y’know, old, may have some problems. Stalls a little.”

“That definitely does not make me feel better.” At this point, the two were halfway down the other side of the wheel, since they were some of the first ones to board. Hopefully the process was about to finish.

“Did you at least enjoy seeing the stars when we were at the top?” Lance probed, obviously asking something else with those words – what question, though, fuck if Keith knew.

“I guess. If it wasn’t just for a shaky forty seconds.”

“Ferris Wheels tend to stop and let everyone have a turn at the top for a minute or two. And in the movies, sometimes the main couple gets stuck at the top and then some cute romcom shit can happen leading inevitably to small-town marriage, a sheep dog, and an awkward cameo from Reba MacEntire.”

“Who?” Keith chose to ignore the mention of other “cute romcom shit”.

“Oh my god I can’t even look at you,” Lance sighed dramatically, leaning his chin on the arm he had propped up on the side of the car. Keith repressed the urge to look up the name on his phone, convincing himself that the fairground’s spotty connection wasn’t any better the further you get from the ground. Luckily, the banter got them close enough to the end of boarding that the Ferris Wheel began moving again, this time at a constant speed.

Sure enough, after a few pleasant goes-around on the Ferris Wheel, it slowed to a stop every couple of minutes to let whoever was on the top have their moment. Keith glanced up – currently it was a lonely woman having a borderline-R-rated moment with an ice cream cone. Everyone had their thing, he supposed. As they neared the top, Keith leaned back in the rocking car to look up at the approaching stars. He was really into astronomy and, regrettably, astrology, as a kid, and he could still pick out a few familiar constellations despite the hazy lights of the fairground obscuring many stars from view.

A soft _thud_ next to Keith informed him that Lance had also leaned back to look up with him. “What’cha looking at?”

“Probably whatever you’re looking at?” Keith asked, glad the obvious questions no longer made him angry, at least not with his low energy reserves. “Stars, galaxies, aliens.”

“You really think there are aliens out there?” Lance asked, turning to look at Keith. The two braced themselves as the ride lurched up one more peg. They were now second from the top.

“Almost certainly.” Keith replied – having forced this conversation on Shiro too many times in his life to not have a prepared, lengthy answer by now. “The Fermi Paradox is a thing, yes, but statistically it just doesn’t make any sense for alien life not to exist in some form. My theory going forward is that the alien life out there is way too different for our puny human minds to even _understand_ and they just don’t see the point in even paying attention to us.”

“Pssh, I bet I could grab their attention,” Lance remarked, shooting a defense scowl into the darkness. “I could totally seduce some alien babe and drive her around in my spaceship, if I had one. It’d be in the shape of a kitten, though.”

“The only scenario in which I can imagine that happening is if she was some kind of spy just using you to kidnap your kitten spaceship and handcuff you to a tree or something when she was done with you.”

The accusation didn’t faze Lance at all. “Kinky,” he replied. Keith laughed at that, bending over his still-sore midsection from how ridiculous Lance could be, how he sounded like he was actually considering the possibility. When he sat back up, Lance was smiling over at him from his perch at the other end of the car.

“What?” Keith asked, trying to control his breathing again.

“Nothing. You’re cute,” Lance said, blinking softly and scanning Keith’s face. If he had decent eyesight at all, he probably could have seen Keith’s responsive flush from the comment.

The wheel once again turned and they were at the very top – this action somehow triggered something in Lance, who sat up immediately and fumbled for something in his shorts pocket. Keith wasn’t too concerned until Lance opened the door to the car WHILE THEY WERE IN THE AIR to throw something down at the controller’s booth.

“LANCE what the fuck?!” Keith yelled, grabbing Lance’s arm in case the idiot was trying to jump.

“Nah, don’t worry!” Lance was still leaning out of an open door multiple stories in the air, so Keith was still _decidedly worried_. “Just getting that girl’s attention!”

“Who?!”

“The controller girl!” Lance replied, like it was obvious. After looking down a bit more, he scooted back in, hip bumping into Keith’s thigh, and shut the door. “She’s actually a ‘Klance’ fan so I was able to schmooze my way into getting us a full ten minutes at the top. You know, mechanical failure resulting in equipment freeze.” A shit-eating grin. “These things are so old.”

“What’s ‘Klance’? Is it some new segment of yours?”

“Mm, not exactly…” Lance tapped his fingers idly on his knee, and Keith couldn’t tell if it was from nerves or searching for a thought. “It may…or may not be…a ship name.”

“A ship name.”

“Yes.”

“As in…a relationship.”

“Usually fictional, but yes.” A moment, then, “Sometimes not fictional, though. I guess.”

“And…the K?” Keith winced at what he knew the answer was going to be.

“Yup,” Lance replied, laughing softly to himself. “I’m sure you can guess.” Keith nodded hollowly, thinking of the cis teenage girls he had seen at the meet-up what felt like forever ago. Some of those young women might be giggling with their friends right then about little touches or comments Lance and Keith made in their videos and photos on social media. Reading into _everything_. A small part of Keith wondered if those girls – socialized for years for observing and deciphering social cues and interpersonal squabbles – could figure out how Keith felt about this…relationship between them before he could understand it himself.

“But…they know I have been actively aggressive and violent towards you right? I shit on like, everything you say.” As Lance opened his mouth to respond, Keith added, “which, I guess I should say I’m sorry for. Since I’m like…acknowledging it right now.”

“No worries,” Lance breathed. “I mean, yea, you’re not a 10 out of 10 on anyone’s kindness scale but that doesn’t mean you’re not high on the overall person scale.”

“Thanks, I guess. I’m not going to ask what number you’d give me on that one.”

“Good, ‘cuz I wouldn’t have told you,” Lance trilled with a wink.

It was things like that (winks, shipping, calling him cute?!) that made Keith even more averse to talking to Lance about what sort of vibe was between them. This was as close as either of them had been to recognizing it, verbally, to each other. Keith thought he had been careful, not letting himself get to into the idea of Lance Sanchez, famous and beautiful trans YouTuber, being a steadfast part of his life but it was becoming more and more of…A Thing. And Keith wasn’t good at processing Things, unless it was with his fists, which he supposed he had already done.

Did everything need to be figured out right now, right away? Keith was sort of happy with this close friendship he and Lance had been building, and Lance’s current pleasant silence just cemented that even the excitable boy himself wasn’t rushing to figure anything out just yet. Which just made Keith like him more.

He took a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds until his lungs burned, then blew it out slowly. They had ten minutes up at the top of the Ferris Wheel. Just them, the creaky metal supporting them, and the stars.

For now, that’d be okay with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed and please comment with any feedback you have! <3 I really do read and appreciate all the comments I get and they help give me new ideas for where to take things in the future


	6. Joshing

“Ugh, can we just call it for now and take a break?”

“Jeez, you sound just like Lance – we took a break 20 minutes ago.”

“I know,” Keith groaned, dropping his head onto his forearms at Hunk’s editing desk. “But watching the same stupid clip of Lance busting his ass while playing jump rope with his sister has seriously ruined that game for me forever. I don’t know how you can listen to that obnoxious screeching over and over.”

“I wouldn’t really call Maria _obnoxious_ per se-“

“Oh no, I meant Lance.”

“Ah,” Hunk laughed, nodding as he fixed his focus back to the screen.

Although Keith regretted asking Hunk to show him more behind-the-scenes stuff at that moment, it was still pleasant hanging out with the guy without Lance’s need for attention or Pidge’s oppressive genius hovering over them. Once again, it struck Keith how selfless and tolerant Hunk was, spending his weekend on videos that primarily featured and celebrated Lance while the boy was out at a doctor’s appointment. As much as he was enjoying the peaceful silence, Keith felt the curiosity slowly bubble up and out. Another Lance-ism he must have adopted recently.

“Why do you even bother with all of this?” Keith asked, forcing his gaze from the complicated program to the complicated look on Hunk’s face. His eyes were squinted in a way that certainly would buy him a ticket straight to Crows Feet-ville in twenty years, and his tongue stuck out slightly from his mouth as he carefully hovered over and selected items on the screen with the mouse. Once satisfied with whatever change had been made, he sat up straight, stretched, and shot Keith a quizzical look.

“Sorry, got a little too into it – what did you say?”

“You basically _run_ this channel for hardly any recognition, from the audience _or_ Lance. And I know I’m not aware of your whole life or anything, but it seems like you get very little recognition from Lance for anything at all.”

“Hm, I guess you’re right,” Hunk replied, looking thoughtfully up at the whirring ceiling fan. “You really don’t know my life.” Despite the uncharacteristic sass, Hunk’s smile was good-natured.

“Okay…” Keith started once he realized Hunk wasn’t eager to follow up the statement with further information. “Any particular thing I don’t know about?”

“Well, Lance and I have been best friends since…well, almost forever,” Hunk said, turning back to save and exit the program he had up, as if the conversation was ready and raring to be excessively long and he didn’t want it to crash. Keith wasn’t used to Hunk acting so directly. “Lots of stuff has happened between us and I’d…do anything for him, really. I think I owe it to him.”

“How could _you_ ever owe _Lance_ something? Last Saturday when I was here you were making him pancakes AND cutting them up into bite-size pieces for him.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration – I only cut them into quarters. But I can kinda see what you mean. Hold on a second.” Hunk got up to move towards the drawers stowed under his bed and started rooting around, looking for something. As he waited, Keith inspected Hunk’s desktop background (now that the program was closed) and found a picture showcasing a hiking trip the team had taken a few months before Keith met Lance (with his fist). Matt and Pidge were off to one side, grins surprisingly not shit-eating, and Lance, Hunk, and Shay made a trio next to them. Lance was in the center of the five, hands on his hips and grinning in a special protagonistic way. Next to him was Hunk: one hand resting on Lance’s shoulder, as if trying to hold him down to Earth, and another arm around Shay’s waist, pulling her close. The closeness of the couple left a blank space to their left, since the photo remained centered on Lance. Classic.

Hunk came back, a square box under one arm and hands going up to re-tie the headband holding his bangs out of his face. When the hair-tying practice first occurred, Hunk had offhandedly mentioned in their videos that he needed to get a haircut, but such comments of his had mysteriously disappeared as Hunk got more and more used to the look. Keith had to admit, the shaggy style worked well for him.

“These are some old photos, me and Lance from before college,” Hunk introduced, opening the box and carefully thumbing through some of the old plastic-y photo paper. “They might give you some perspective for what I’m about to explain.” Hunk handed a stack of photos secured only by the slick waxy layer common to developed photos and Keith grabbed them after wiping any grease from his fingers off on his pants.

At first, when Keith looked at the top photo, he almost asked who the girl in the princess dress was that was posing with Hunk, who was also costumed, but as a pirate. However, after a moment of recognizing the girl’s tan skin, piercing blue eyes, and toothy grin, his brain made the connection and the instinct to slap himself was only barely weak enough to resist.

“Oh my god, it’s you and Gloriana,” Keith said. Then, panicked, he blinked and added, “I mean Lance. Pre-transition.”

“Yup,” was all Hunk said, looking down at the picture mirthfully. “And you’d have to ask him yourself, but I don’t think he cares too much about the deadname thing. He’s always referring to his pre-transition self as Glo anyway. He also likes to call her ‘Lance, in a pupal state.’” Hunk made the last statement with a fond roll of his eyes.

Keith nodded, but he was already hooked back to the photos, sifting through an entire history of friendship contained in a single foot-long square box. Hunk and Lance looked to be around 12 or 13 in the earliest ones, and the settings ranged from the two at a premiere for one of the Twilight movies to Hunk poking Lance with a pencil, who had fallen asleep as the two studied from serious-looking textbooks. Keith wondered idly if those textbooks and nice-looking lives were what let _them_ go to a real college while Keith struggled to just get a single paper submitted online after a late shift at the Galaxy Mart. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to get salty, though.

For the first ten minutes of silent poking through photos, Keith was struck by the sheer number of pictures of Lance with long hair. The traditional story Lance and other trans males usually told was that their transition started with a cropped haircut – Lance prided himself on getting his current style in high school and never straying from it. However, no intermediary period was represented.

Instead, between one stack of photos and the next, Lance went from being a B-cup-and-a-half high school girl with braces and hair up in a lazy bun, smiling with Hunk, to a crew-cut boy with perfect white teeth and only a hint of bump on his bound chest, smiling with Hunk. Hunk looked exactly the same in each picture, aside for a single ear piercing he had in the more recent one.

“Man, Lance must have either been one decisive son of a bitch or there’s something in these photos that’s missing.” Keith looked up expectantly at Hunk, who was grimacing and even looked a little…shameful?

“Well, to tell you the truth, the thing that was missing…was me,” Hunk breathed, speaking slowly and carefully, as if he were giving a deathbed confession. His tone sounded similarly morbidly serious. “I only have pictures of the before and after because I wasn’t around for the ‘during’.” Then he followed up with a random, “Have you seen Drake and Josh?”

“Uh…” Keith wracked his brain. Was that show popular when he was living with the lady that didn’t own a TV or the one that thought Nickelodeon was the devil? Either way, he was only aware of the program, never actually watched it himself. “I think I remember the gist? Two guys’ single parents get married and it’s about their lives as step-brothers.”

“Exactly,” Hunk replied, nodding. “Josh is this big, bumbling nerd-type who gets annoyed with but looks up to Drake, his hot, skinny, babe-magnet step-brother. The reason I bring it up is because I think, before Lance transitioned, we weren’t actually friends, we just _thought_ we were.” Keith cocked an eyebrow and opened his mouth to question him, but Hunk beat him to it. “We were like Drake and Josh. I liked Lance, hung out with him and put up with his shit, but I also sort of…envied him? Hated him? No, ‘hate’s a strong word…We were really close but not really kind to each other like friends should be.”

The Drake and Josh analogy didn’t make an incredibly amount of sense to Keith, but it was obvious that it was the best description of Lance and Hunk’s relationship pre-transition that the boy could offer.

Keith looked down to the photo of Hunk and Keith, pre-transition. If Keith had ever found himself interested in women, and if he had been the appropriate tween age, he would say that Lance was probably the prettiest girl in his class.

“Was it because you…might have liked him?” Keith prompted, voice quiet in preparation for Hunk to make a disgusted denial.

Instead, Hunk smiled sadly and nodded again, this time curtly and just once. “Well, that too. I didn’t know a single guy throughout middle school and most of high school that wouldn’t watch Lance go down the hallway or think about smelling his hair.” At Keith’s scandalized, scrunched-up nose, Hunk added, “Don’t make that face, I’m sure you think about smelling his hair as he is now. In fact, whose shampoo have you been using when showering over here?”

“I…plead the fifth.” Keith sniffed subtly and cursed himself for the citrusy scent still wafting around his hair. Just in case, Keith moved to tie it back into a ponytail.

“So yea, I was a little resentful towards Lance because we had been best friends forever and he was so pretty and also _so cool_ – he was the first kid in our class to not only come out as gay, but to come out a WEEK LATER as bisexual. In a school remodeled from an old super-church that had moved out only to move into a building the size of a mall. That was just so badass, and I felt like a loser in comparison. And because I hung around Lance like a fly on meat, people treated me like co-royalty.

“So, when Lance came out to me as trans, said he wanted to cut his hair short and try buying a binder and trying out new pronouns and even a new _name_ …” Hunk cringed, like the story was consuming him slowly but he just couldn’t stop talking. “I just kinda shut down. It was too much for me, and all I could think is, ‘why is she throwing this all away? She’s going to become a recluse hermit laughingstock _thing_ for something she’ll just change her mind over in a week.’”

“Oh god,” Keith blurted out, too shocked by Hunk’s revelation to stop himself, or even allow a respectable pause. “But she hadn’t changed her mind about being bisexual!”

“Yes, I obviously know that now.” Hunk grimaced and his voice sounded exasperated, but the glassy look in his eyes told Keith he wasn’t mad at him, more likely himself. “But at the time I just kind of nodded my head, pretended to understand, and started avoiding him privately. I even convinced myself that maybe without me, he would get his head screwed on straight and realize how bad of an idea it was and he’d come back to me and we’d be friends again. But, he didn’t. He just went ahead anyway.”

Hunk continued talking, but he turned back to the computer to click open some browser and type eagerly, searching for something buried deep in the hard drive. “He cut his hair. Sure, a few girls also got some hip new haircuts afterwards in his honor, but the move suddenly made the boys stop seeing him as cool bisexual and more of a lipstick lesbian. The girls, too, and they worried Lance was catching glimpses in the locker room. None of that had happened before, when Lance was ‘normal’ aside from his announcement of sexuality.

“Next, when he started binding – which I think was with _goddamn_ bandages, that idiot – all I knew is that he refused to remove them for gym class and had such problems with nearly passing out and with vomiting all over the track during the mile run, that the administration just started giving him detention time during gym period, ‘for his own protection’. I had heard about this all second-hand, since he had stopped trying to text me at that point.”

Hunk sat up suddenly, leaning towards his monitor and whispering a small, “ _a-ha!_ ” A click, and an image of Lance, short hair, freckles high on his cheeks, and sitting with awkward bumps on his chest that resembled neither breasts, bra, nor binder, smiling fully over a lunch tray of fish sticks and mac-and-cheese. “This is from our E-yearbook. The caption was, ‘Resident 9th-grader Lance McClain enjoys his favorite meal in the cafeteria.’”

“Lance _McClain_? What kind of a stupid-ass name is that?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Hunk’s expression took a break from being guilty to instead shooting a surprised look up at Keith. “That’s Lance’s actual name. His dad’s like, Irish or something. Sanchez is his mom’s last name, so he uses it to give himself a little bit of a pseudonym.”

“…McClain?” was all Keith could repeat, feeling like his mind was blown so hard that his dick was jealous. Hunk took pity on him and continued his story.

“My point is, he was obviously alone at this lunch table, aside from the yearbook geek that snapped the photo, and luckily the guy must have not known Lance because he took whatever name he gave him, even though he was still registered as Gloriana. This is Lance’s first case of someone publicly using his real name.” Hunk’s composure seemed fine until Keith noticed the cursor shaking on the screen slightly from his tense grip on the computer mouse. “It could have been me, accepting him, helping him through this, but instead it was some junior who was trying to get some candid’s in before the deadline.”

“Shit…” Keith started, but Hunk shook his head, indicating more.

“I can beat myself up for all the things I missed out on, and maybe I will forever, and maybe I deserve that, but Lance eventually tried reaching out again. One time, Pidge was out sick so I was just eating alone and playing the like, 5th fake sequel of Kingdom Hearts on my DS when Lance just comes up, sets his tray down, looks me dead in the eyes and asks, ‘Can I sit here?’ And everything that I had been worried about, all my anger mixed with that shame just kinda fizzled out and I nodded and somehow, we actually started talking. Like, immediately.”

“Wow.” Keith was wondering how Hunk’s storytelling abilities had limited his own vocabulary so much. Maybe Hunk was siphoning all available language use from the immediate area.

“I know,” Hunk said, smiling. “I even did a cute, ‘The name’s Lance, right?’ and Lance laughed and nodded and we kept talking. The next day, Pidge was back and they were rearing and ready to beat my ass after I told them exactly _why_ this kid was now eating with us, mostly because Pidge themselves was just starting to figure their own shit out.”

“So, Pidge went to your guys’ high school?”

“Yea, they were like two years younger than us but skipped straight into our year around sophomore year. I think getting to know Lance was something that encouraged them to transition as well.”

Keith nodded, doing his best to soak all the exposition up while simultaneously trying to imagine Hunk as this bad person who ignored his best friend when they needed his help. Then, a thought occurred.

“This may be a stupid question…But I assume Pidge’s real name is not Pidge Gunderson either?”

Thankfully, Hunk still had enough mirth in him to laugh. “I would hope not. Their real last name is Holt, and I think they’d appreciate I don’t just go sharing their deadname around, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Keith replied, running the edge of one photo against the rough callouses on his palms. “And I understand why you reacted how you did. Lance likes to do everything at once and it kind of got sprung on you and you probably didn’t kno-“

“Pssh, don’t make excuses for me, Keith,” Hunk interrupted, shaking his head. “I just wasn’t there for him when he needed me most, and it’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and hopefully it will stay that way. I try to be here now, whenever he needs it. Because he’d do the same for me in a heartbeat. Even if he isn’t the most thoughtful social butterfly in the meantime.”

Keith sat, eyes moving from the photos Hunk was now starting to re-organize, to Hunk’s nostalgic expression, to Lance’s immaculate bed, to the happy image of everyone in the woods on the computer screen.

“Shit,” Keith breathed. “That’s…” Don’t be like Lance. Don’t let him influence you. Don’t say- “Woof.”

“Woof indeed,” Hunk laughed softly.

“I never knew you had all this…backstory,” Keith blurted, followed quickly by, “no offense.”

“No offense experienced,” Hunk replied, smiling. “I think from the videos people really just see me as Lance’s ‘thicc’ straight friend who is just _all_ about cooking and eating and making jokes about how physical activity is difficult for me.” Before Keith could voice his anger about Hunk’s unfortunate characterization, he continued, “But keep in mind that I’M the one doing all the editing to make it look that way.”

“Wha-“ Keith furrowed his brow, now cycling through his memories of all the times Hunk was made the butt of an eating, running, or vomiting joke. “Why the hell would you do that?”

Hunk shrugged. “We have some young audiences that could probably benefit from seeing a diverse group of queer folk living their lives and being happy. Making myself sillier keeps them entertained when Lance gets too annoying, or Pidge gets too serious…I guess I do it for them. I really don’t mind it.”

“You do it for…the children.”

That, Hunk laughed at, doubling over slightly and hands clutching at the photo box to keep it from slipping. “I guess when you put it that way, yea.” Hunk’s pure grin made Keith’s own mouth instinctually curl up as well, not able to reject the positivity pouring out of the editor.

As Hunk moved to stow away the box of photos, Keith wandered to the windows, looking out at the shining, sunny view. The neighborhood was obviously filled with college students in rental houses – one place across the way from the team’s had a rickety wooden table with triangles painted on it and some scattered solo cups from a discarded game of beer-pong. While Austin was a pretty liberal city compared to the rest of Texas, it was still a pleasant surprise to see multiple rainbow flags and “Black Lives Matter” signs in the neighborhood. It made Keith feel safe, knowing the people around him cared about issues that, in his opinion, were just common sense.

Those flags and signs…and the strange, brutally defenestrated scarecrow hanging by its foot out the window of a townhouse catty-corner to Hunk and Lance’s. Fake blood dripped from its mouth and Keith wondered if it was genuine decoration or a forgotten antique from last Halloween. With college students, you really couldn’t tell.

Keith absentmindedly sat on Lance’s bed. Still as cushy as ever. “Hey, Hunk?” he asked, holding tight onto the comforter to keep himself from lying down in the perfectly-folded covers.

“Hm?” The boy was already engrossed in his editing again, long-winded tale forgotten.

“I know in the videos Lance can be flirty…but does he act that way with everyone?”

The _chit chat clatter clack_ of Hunk furiously typing on the keys paused for a telling second, then continued. Keith noticed him glance quickly over his shoulder. “Why do you ask…” It was not a question.

“It’s just that Lance has been really buddy-buddy with me recently. _Especially_ given the circumstances. I’ve only known the guy for a month and already he’s fuckin’ Baywatch-carrying me from burning buildings.”

“More like a sweltering carnival ride,” Hunk quipped back, his grin audible. “Lance is just friendly, you know that.”

“So…” Keith swallowed. Maybe asking Lance’s closest friend about this was a bad idea – whenever Lance got back from his appointment, any secrets were as good as told. “There’s no chance that he might be interested in being _more_ than friends?” Shit, that really made it sound like _Keith_ was interested. Talk about middle school bullshit.

“Why, are you?!” Hunk asked quickly, turning in his chair. His face looked strained, as if trying to keep something in that was bursting at the seams of his mind. “I mean, he _does_ seem to want to hang around you a lot. Alone, even.”

“So. He _is_ interested?” Keith prompted, brow furrowing in frustration. He was never good at these stupid word games and it was _especially_ irritating when people dangled the social cue he recognized but couldn’t translate over his head.

“Well, mayb-“

A loud _SLAM!_ from downstairs suddenly interrupted them both. Hunk and Keith stood to go check what was going on, but several, louder, thuds told them that someone was coming up the stairs, FAST. Keith felt his posture immediately bend into a ready position, despite the low likelihood of a burglar in the bright afternoon in a broke-ass college neighborhood. Hunk just looked concerned, and when the door to the bedroom slammed open, Keith could see why.

As he should have expected, Lance was the one that was making the loud ruckus, and it looked like right before he opened the door he may have also been making sobbing noises. Now, the only trace of that were two tear streaks, ruby-red eyes, and a slight tremble to his lip. Which instantly pretended to smile when he noticed Keith was there, standing next to his bed.

“H-hey guys!” he greeted shakily. “Didn’t realize y’all were editing today.”

The ‘y’all’ didn’t sound right on his voice. Keith knew from Lance’s extensive life-story-telling that the boy moved to Texas from Florida, and before that, Cuba, too far along in his life to have a Texan accent. In fact, of the four, Keith was probably the only one who could pull off a ‘y’all’ that didn’t sound awkward and forced. Not that he really liked the sound of that twang.

“Well. We are!” Hunk replied, smiling and shooting a look at Keith that said _This is normal. Pretend this is normal. It’s what he needs_. Keith nodded slightly, but decided not to smile because “normal” for Keith was probably just his resting bitch face.

“Your…appointment go okay?” Keith asked. It contradicted the normalcy plan, but if Lance had somehow been diagnosed with a horrible illness while gone, Keith wanted to know about it.

“Yep! Just a lot to think about, you know.” Lance moved towards his bed so fast Keith almost didn’t slide out of the way fast enough. “And you know me, I tend to get emotional.” He was smoothing the covers of his already-perfect duvet.

“You do?” Keith shot a look back at Hunk saying, _This is too weird_. Hunk replied with something that Keith couldn’t decipher. Stupid lack of body language skills.

“Lance, was this…” Hunk swallowed, chose his words carefully, then, “was this the doctor that did your letters?”

The letters approving Lance for SRS – the letters that instilled Keith with a meaningless fury in the beginning of July. Keith had seen neither hide nor tail of the things, or the entire topic of SRS, since that video. No info for where viewers could donate, or what surgeon he was going to, or what type he was getting.

Lance nodded slowly, smile now wobbling and eyes squinting to hold back tears. Keith hated physical contact, but the only reason he didn’t rush Lance with a power-hug right then was because Hunk still hadn’t made any move. Except to take out his cell phone.

“Is it alright if I call your mom? She likes to know when stuff’s going on.”

Lance nodded again, looking incredibly grateful. Hunk bowed his head and exited the room, shutting the door for privacy. And Lance and Keith were alone.

 _C’mon, Keith, be supportive_ , Keith tried telling himself, digging his fingernails into his palms to amp himself up. _Be anything other than a blind raging sociopath for once in your goddamn life_. He wracked and wracked his brain for the right words, something to make Lance happy again, he needed to be happy again.

When all he said was, “You want to talk about it?”, he winced. So lame. Inadequate.

For a second, Lance grinned weakly and shook his head, about to say no. Then he glanced at the door Hunk disappeared through, tilted his head, reconsidered. As the gears began turning in his head, Keith could hear soft _pap pap_ ’s from new tears hitting the floor. This time, Keith stepped closer.

“Hey, are…you okay?” Closer up, Keith could see that Lance was only communicating with his head at this point because his teeth were digging into his tongue and inside of his mouth with violent strength. His long arms, usually so expressive, caved in on him, clutching at his sides, which were HEAVING now. Keith saw his legs rattle and moved faster, just in time to catch Lance by his shoulders as he threatened to topple over.

“I…can’t breathe…” a raspy voice cracked in Keith’s ear. “H-help…”

“Lance, do you need me to call an ambulance? Do I need to call 911?” Keith propped up Lance enough to see him shake his head. “What’s wrong?”

Lance just continued his slight convulsions, but the movement and weight of Lance on him reminded him of something oddly close and familiar. The list of similarities between Shiro and Lance returned to his mind, and he added to it.

  1. Both men have scars. Lance, two stretched lines on his chest. Shiro…an entire arm.
  2. Both scars involve incidents of extreme anxiety, be it a horrible multi-car pile-up accident or a lifetime of estrogen poisoning.
  3. Shiro had horrible panic attacks in the wake of losing his arm, and in getting a new one. Maybe…Lance also had horrible panic attacks.



“Lance,” Keith started, trying to use the word to keep them both centered. “Do you know any breathing exercises? Can you breathe in slow through your nose and out through your mouth?”

Lance tried to take a steady breath, but Keith could see through his skin-tight halter top that his lungs were not even close to cooperating. Unfortunately, Shiro had been incredibly independent with his coping exercises, and so Keith only knew of that one, mostly because Shiro did it so often, especially once he was really on the path to recovery. When it came to mental health though, most of the time it was Shiro working through coping exercises for _Keith’s_ sake. Anxiety attacks labeled so only because Keith didn’t have the appropriate developmental history or records to be diagnosed with autism, which is what Keith, Shiro, and many of Keith’s former foster parents _believed_ him to have.

“Lance, get on the bed,” Keith ordered, pushing back the duvet and forcing Lance down before tugging the blankets and sheets off completely.

“D-don’t mess it up,” Lance wheezed, looking in dismay at his bed as Keith tugged one sheet off a particularly hard-to-reach corner.

“I’ll fix it later, promise,” Keith said, willing to say anything at this point. He took the massive armful of blankets and started wrapping Lance in them, as tight as his out-of-practice muscles could bear. Lance whined again.

“Keith, don’t even try-“

“Look, if it doesn’t work, you can tell me I told you so once you’re feeling better, alright?” Keith hissed, giving a good _yank_ on the blanket and pushing Lance down so that he was laying like a fuzzy burrito with his head propped up on his pillow. For a few minutes, Lance was still quietly sobbing and refused to look at Keith, but Keith wrapped his hands around the bundle containing Lance anyway. Eventually, the sobbing died down to small hiccups. Hunk was still not back in the room – either Ms. Sanchez was a talker, like her son, or Hunk knew that Lance wanted minimal interaction right now. Likely both, though.

It took everything Keith had not to groan at how beautiful Lance’s face was, even amid mental dysfunction. The sunlight from the peaceful day reflected of his tear-stained face and glimmered like a rainbow set of freckles next to his modest brown ones. His hair was unkempt (likely from Keith’s manhandling), but it still hung in cute curls, just not directly on his head. A strange motherly urge made Keith want to press his lips to Lance’s forehead and he had to restrain a disgusted grimace from such a stupidly estrogenized thought. He did, however, move a small piece of hair behind Lance’s ear, finally prompting the other boy to look at him.

First, a sniffle. Then, “I-I told you so.” Keith smirked, but not in the usual evil way Lance did.

“I don’t know, you seem a little better to me.” Lance actually smiled slightly at that, rolling his eyes. The smile uncovered part of his lips, bright red and slightly bloody from where his teeth worried about the entire inside of his mouth.

“Could you,” Lance gave a hard swallow. “Keep touching my hair? I’ll tell you - _hic­_ \- what happened if you do?” For a guy that normally told everyone else what the plan was, Lance asking things in such a timid, small way was almost enough to convince Keith that this Lance was some weird replacement Lance who had mental breakdowns in front of boys they (maybe? probably? unlikely-y?) liked more than friends.

Keith just nodded, not wanting to impact the air with any unnecessary noise, and stroked his hands through Lance’s hair. It had a certain kind of softness one only felt on a silk robe, or, more likely, well-conditioned hair. Touching it felt like a shot of espresso – or some other kind of illicit drug. Sometimes heightened sensory perception had its perks.

Instantly, Lance opened his mouth and the whole story just rolled out in one big wheel that kept spinning and spinning.

\----------

Apparently, in Lance’s own words, he was stupid. He got his two letters and made the announcement before considering “literally anything”. His doctor’s appointment was to discuss which kind of SRS to get and the discussion was disheartening, enough so that Lance had to pull over on the way home to have one anxiety attack before getting home just to have another one in front of his friends. His options were, as he described them:

  1. **Metoidioplasty** : severing tissue holding the clit to the labia, creating a really, really, REALLY (like only one inch long) small penis. The cheaper, but “useless” option. Again, Lance’s words only.


  1. **Phalloplasty** : taking skin from an arm, leg, back, stomach, etc. and using it to make pretty much a fully-functional penis. Much more expensive, and leaves a horrific scar. (“Like seriously man, do NOT look that shit up!”)



Keith himself had done very little research on either, not being able to afford even a full 7 days a week of binders to worry about surgery, but he knew Lance was really underselling the pros of either. And he was neglecting one important option.

“Why not just…skip SRS?”

“W-what?” Lance wriggled around as best he could in the burrito, got tired, and waited for Keith to help unroll him enough so he could turn and look at the other boy. “I can’t just _not_ get SRS.”

“I know it’s shitty and it’s something you think you need, but if the available options just don’t seem right for you…”

“No, I can _make_ them right for me,” Lance grumbled, face determined despite the mucous dried on its lower half. “I need this. I _need_ it to work.”

“What do you even want bottom surgery for? Is it dysphoria, needing to feel like something’s down there? Because I _know_ you hate packers and that they make you feel hella uncomfortable- and NO comments on me using hella just then, it just felt right!” Lance grinned sheepishly, caught just before he could make a remark. “See _this_ is exactly why I got so pissed when you made the first video. You don’t need a dick to be a man, Lance. You don’t need fucking _anything_. You’re per- just fine as you are.”

Oh yea, great save.

“Keith…” Lance now looked completely amused, biting his swollen lip again, but this time he was restraining giggles instead of cries. “Oh my god.”

“Lance could you stop acting like a fucking infant for _one second_ -“

“Don’t you think there was a reason I didn’t mention it in the video, Keith?” Lance asked, giving Keith the side-eye and inspecting him closely. “I had a reason and it wasn’t privacy. If you haven’t noticed, my standards for privacy are reeeeally low.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Keith sighed, rubbing his temples in preparation for a major headache. “What’s the reason, then.”

“I want to _fuck_ guys.”

Keith stared, his face contorted into comical amounts of shock. Lance just grinned, and his smile made Keith’s face redder than the comment itself.

“Y-you…”

“Want to fuck guys. Gay guys. In the ass. Like a queer guy would,” Lance repeated, each statement punctuated with strong consonants. “Doesn’t have to be an ass, though, I guess.” His batted eyelashes made Keith want to call _bullshit_ on Hunk for pretending that nothing was going on here earlier.

“You do realize you can fuck guys right now. And girls. I thought you were bi?”

“Ugh, duh, I know,” Lance whined, more in the teenager-sense than the just-had-a-sobbing-anxiety-attack sense. “But girls are considerate. They get it. Gay guys can be….woof.”

“Please don’t say woof when talking about fucking people,” Keith ground out. He wanted to add something else, something to convince Lance that the male gay community would accept him no matter what. He was adorable, and slim, and the perfect twink-

But Lance hated that word. He didn’t ever want to be called that. And Lance was smart enough to know that any faith in cis gay men as a whole would just lead to disappointment.

“Is this about being manly? Topping guys?” Keith asked quietly, knowing from his own experience on Grinder how toxic seeking pleasure with other guys was when you weren’t considered a “real man”. Once, Keith had even been accused of being a cis woman with a fetish for gay men. It caused him some internal crises for a day or so, then he deleted the app and ate some cereal. Maybe Lance wasn’t the cereal-eating type.

“Maybe? I don’t know…” Lance was now looking up at the ceiling, and Keith could see children’s glow-in-the-dark stars pasted up there. The constellations were pretty accurate, and Keith felt a pang of nostalgia for their trip to the fair, despite it only being a few days ago. “I’m also worried that the guys I want won’t want me anymore after seeing what’s going on down there.”

The same thoughts had crossed Keith’s mind many a time before, but for him, it was easy to brush off. He had so many other things to worry about like getting a degree and making enough money to live off of that cosmetic changes to suit imaginary partners seemed…silly? Well, for _him_ they were cosmetic because he didn’t get any dysphoria with his sexual organs. His breasts on the other hand….well, hopefully he’d have enough money one day.

Maybe Keith should have said something calming and smooth like _I’ll like you no matter what_ or maybe even something flirty and crass like _Whatever’s going on down there is something I want_.

He settled on an aggressive, “If there are guys like that out there, they’re worthless. Don’t even give them the benefit of a glance. If you’re happy the way you are, then fuck everyone else.”

“Or, don’t,” Lance replied, causing Keith to return with a confused look. “Don’t fuck them. That is.”

Not able to contain themselves after such a depressive mood, Keith laughed at Lance’s corny joke, and Lance joined in, both leaning in enough to bump foreheads together.

Keith opened his eyes, crinkled from the humor and saw Lance staring back, so close.

His whole face, so close.

His mouth, so close and footsteps were sounding outside of the door and Lance was getting closer and the door handle rattled and Keith could only feel Lance’s lips for a millisecond before he turned away, shooting Keith a cheeky grin as Hunk came back in, already starting an apology.

“Sorry, the call went longer than I thought and then I had to make a few more and Pidge wasn’t answering so I had to call their brother to get their dumb ass to answer and,” Hunk stopped, took a breath, and assessed Keith and Lance, laying close to each other on the bed. Lance was swaddled loosely in the whole of his bedsheets and Keith still had his forgotten hand in Lance’s hair, likely having the coloring of a zombie with too much rouge on. It probably didn’t look _too_ scandalous, but it was enough for Hunk to blush a little. “Basically, I have news.”

“What news?” Lance asked, sitting up curiously and tugging his hair out of Keith’s starving hand. Hunk shifted from one leg to another, considering what to say. Or maybe what not to say, based on his reply.

“Secret birthday news. Just, don’t be in the house Thursday evening until midnight. And come…well rested.”

Lance practically _squealed_ , jumping up and thanking Hunk and squeezing the large man in as big a hug as his lean muscles could muster. A _bzzt_ from Keith’s pocket alerted him to a text from the man now sheepishly shrugging at Keith over Lance’s shoulder.

“ _24 Hour Live Stream on Lance’s birthday_. _I’m sure you know what date that is_. _;)”_

And damn it if Keith didn’t have that date memorized for the past four years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow guess who wanted to discuss mental health AND trans stuff AND try to make hunk more than a cardboard cutout??? the answer is me but who knows if I did a decent job so comment and let me know if I did lol
> 
> For real, I really value any and all feedback and I am so thankful for all the thoughtful comments I've gotten from people! And also you guys give me really good ideas of how to handle certain topics in the future so watch out for that!!
> 
> OHOHOH also the live stream will be next and it'll probably take place over 2 chapters (a two-parter!) so yea get pumped


	7. July 28th, A.M.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long!! my life has been kinda wild this summer but I'm glad I could get this chapter out (even if it's over a month after Lance's actual birthday but whateeeever)

_Friday, July 28 th_

_12:23AM_

“Okay, I’m actually wondering if he fell asleep at the wheel and accidentally drove into a ditch. I’m calling him again.”

“Wouldn’t it be even _more_ irresponsible of him to answer that call while he’s still driving?”

“I will neither confirm nor deny that theory…ugh, answering machine again, shit. I’m texting him.”

“Hunk! Give me your phone or birthday boy’s gonna be enjoying his first, last, and ONLY day as a twenty-one year old in gay hell.”

“Pidge, don’t fight me while the streams’ on, that’s super embarrassing!”

Keith watched coolly from his perch on Lance’s bed as Pidge and Hunk wrestled over the latter’s phone, which still rang dimly as it attempted to reach Lance for about the sixth time. Normally a fight, even a pretend one, would get Keith pumped to interact, and probably would excite the waiting-in-earnest viewers, but he was enjoying the comfortable feel of Lance’s bed too much to intervene. He kept thinking back to how much _more_ comfortable it was with Lance’s radiating body heat and radiant face next to him. And how confused that encounter left him.

The playful smooch was still uncategorized in Keith’s mind. Just a stray piece of information that barely even seemed like a memory because of its indecipherable meaning. Was he glad that Lance was showing interest? Was he uncomfortable – not used to Lance’s version of friendship being so touchy-feely and intimate? Was he disheartened because Lance treated the point of contact as something so fleeting and silly? And did Keith _want_ it to be more meaningful?

As much as Keith’s reasonably cautious side wanted to argue that the kiss was unwarranted and inappropriate, given how short and turbulent a time they’d known each other, he couldn’t quite convince himself that the sheen of Lance’s lips in the sunlight or the curl of his mouth when sputtering out some awful pun weren’t appealing. Keith desperately wanted to try it again. In private. Maybe still in Lance’s bed though.

Unfortunately, such a time never came before Lance’s fancy 24-hour live stream birthday extravaganza. They saw each other a few times, but Lance never acted much different (meaning, of course, no more or less winks, blown kisses, and stupid pet names). The most notable interaction was when Lance laughed about Keith considering Lunchables “making a pizza” and slapped him lightly on the shoulder. Lance practically cried laughing and the combination of Lance’s touch and Lance’s tears brought Keith back to that moment on his spiral galaxy duvet.

The Lunchables moment was, of course, cut short so Lance and Hunk could teach him how to make a proper pizza. And doubly of course, they shot a video about it. Because heaven forbid a moment in these people’s lives and relationships go by without thousands of audience members weighing in.

Keith was just starting to convince himself that everything would be okay and that he could avoid Lance’s ridiculously endless flirtations for twenty-four hours straight when he looked up from his thoughts to find Lance hovering above him with a finger to his entrancing lips.

“Lance?” Keith asked in a low whisper, despite the fierce Shiro-voice urging him not to engage.

“You must really like my bed, huh?” Lance chuckled softly, sitting on the edge next to Keith’s head. Before Keith could stammer out an excuse, Lance explained, “it’s the memory foam, right? It’s like a fuckin’ drug!”

“Mmhmm,” Keith ground out, trying not to think of the source of his _real_ addiction, whose ass was sitting less than three inches from his ear.

“How long have they been at it?” Lance tilted his chin towards the camera, in front of which Pidge was standing on Hunk’s lap, reaching so far over his head the two were at risk of toppling the whole desk chair. Keith couldn’t read the scrolling live-chat from across the room, but he could see the change from normal text speak to constant caps-lock with emoticons littered about in the past few minutes. Seems like Keith wasn’t the only one who noticed Lance’s presence.

“Only a few minutes, I think.” Actually, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he was wallowing about Lance. Maybe no time at all. “This is a twenty-four-hour livestream by the way. For your birthday, with the benefits going towards your bottom surgery.” When Lance whipped his face down to finally look Keith in the eyes for the first time, speechless, Keith added with a wry smile, “Surprise?”

“Wha- you- why did you- _when_ -?” Lance murmured question words over and over, not quite sure which to settle on.

“I admit, it was all Hunk’s idea. He thought you deserved something special.” Not realizing until too late how pathetic it sounded, Keith added, “I do too.”

Thankfully skipping over Keith’s pitiable attempt at intimate conversation, Lance checked his watch and asked, “What all do you guys have planned? Am I too late? Am I cutting into something?”

“No, Pidge made us stake out a whole hour at the beginning, just in case you were really _really_ late instead of your usual single-really late. We have your favorite films, a nail art set-up, lip syncing…although Hunk says we have to be careful with the songs because of copyright claims.”

Lance nods, eyes dotting around as if he’s recounting some old details that escaped him. “Yea, we’ve had problems with that in the past. I guess it’d be bad if people are donating to the tune of copyrighted music, huh?”

“I suggested we maybe do karaoke instead, since the background music by itself may be safer for some songs. Hunk said you used to be a really good singer.”

“Ha!” Lance barked out, which halted the aggressive movement in front of them. Before the surprise and wrath of Hunk and Pidge could converge, Lance leaned down to whisper even more privately, his eyes conveying the weight of whatever secret he was trying to communicate. “’Used to’ is the key phrase there.”

When Lance’s eyes shown with an ambiguous watery film, Keith hated himself for loving how they looked like blue pools reflecting the stars rather than immediately expressing concern over Lance’s emotional state. Maybe it was the real stars peeking through the bedroom curtains, or the plastic glow-in-the-dark ones that Lance always swore would fall off in the night and _thwak_ him on the head. But Keith saw entire galaxies in Lance’s eyes, galaxies that were trying to tell Keith something, using their immense gravity to suck him closer to whatever was going on in Lance’s head. Closer to some feeling that Lance and Keith’s stunted emotional frameworks could not _hope_ to evolve to.

Lance so often treated everything like a joke that Keith wasn’t sure what was for fun, what was for show, what was for real, and what was nothing at all. But everything in Lance’s eyes screamed _real REAL REAL!_ and they were focused on Keith, not the camera.

“Thanks for helping with this Keith,” Lance breathed. “I appreciate i-“ Before the moment could get real closure, Hunk and Pidge tackled the lanky boy into an unsettling mess on top of Keith himself. But, if the moment had to be ruined by anything, he was glad it was the three members of LanceTrance laughing and cursing at each other.

_4:14AM_

Leave it to Lance to find a way to shift Keith’s worldview about seven times before the sun rose. Just after Keith thought Lance and he shared some kind of meaningful connection, Lance went right ahead dropping asinine hints to the waiting kittens about his love life. It was an informal Q-and-A, but Lance found a way to make it _formally_ uncomfortable, _real_ fast.

“’How are you still so blissfully single?’” he read from the chat. Pidge audibly groaned while Keith and Hunk could at least stifle their own sighs at the fanning of Lance’s ego. “Well, it isn’t always easy fighting off the ladies…and the men.” Lance punctuated the statement with an obvious roll of his eyes and shine of his teeth towards Keith, who had to use every ounce of his power to keep from crossing his arms and playing into some bad boy _tsundere_ stereotype. From the rolling comments, though, the “Klance” fangirls were more than satisfied anyway.

 _Great_ , Keith thought, aggressively suppressing his previous hope. _That settles that, he just wants to use this ‘_ thing’ _between us for views. Super clear_.

It was only super clear until the four of them huddled on Lance’s bed, camera facing them for reactions, as they watched the movie _Heathers_ along with the audience. Lance’s pinky kept losing its way, crawling over the high-thread-count sheets to Keith’s thigh and elbow and wrist and hip over and over every time the blue-clad lead character had a romantic tryst with a grungy, leather-clad dude (how familiar). At first, this fit the narrative Keith had happily constructed until he realized the camera only captured the four’s faces for reactions – not their hands. And _Lance_ was the one who positioned the camera in that way. Lance’s finger was a rogue agent.

“Hey, Lance, I really need to-“ Keith tried to interject in between their movie segment and the following: Keith trying to teach the team easy in-home work-outs he learned once Shiro stopped being his buddy and trans-protection clause for the gym.

“Woooowee,” Lance interrupted, head bowing up and down the length of Keith’s body, but eyes keeping towards Keith’s own. It still felt creepy. “This really is a birthday surprise, huh?” As Lance turned to wink at the camera, then displaying the whole room, Keith had glanced down at the work out attire he brought.

Tight yoga pants that, yes, hugged his legs but covered skin from the dip of his waist down to his ankles. A sports bra that, yes, did leave a cut of mid-drift below his chest exposed, but went up above his collarbone to help hide the swell of his breasts. A ponytail that, yes, Lance kept reaching up to run his fingers through without asking.

The work-out segment had thankfully been quick due to everyone’s general lack of practice and perseverance and they only got through some lunges, planks, and crunches before everyone but Keith tagged out. Throughout, Keith and Lance interacted only minimally, mostly because Lance kept making untoward comments about Keith’s ass and Keith would deflect with a more difficult stretch or exercise. It was still enough interaction that the need to ask what the _fuck_ was going on between them rumbled in the back of Keith’s mind – even more than the disconcerting feeling of Keith’s curvy body bouncing or heaving in emasculating ways.

Now, Hunk’s bulky self-built alarm clock reading 4:14AM, Keith could settle and watch the sunrise from a single large window in the hallway outside Lance and Hunk’s bedroom. Just him, his friends, and around twelve thousand young girls that really should be asleep, regardless of the time zone. Dealing with Lance, his affections, and his betrayals could come later.

“Keith, what did you want to say to me earlier?” Lance asked, voice barely below normal volume despite the camera+microphone’s location directly above and behind their heads.

“It’s not something I’m going to ask you about now.” _Not with an audience_ , he wanted to add, but the fangirls would have a field day with what such phrasing could mean about their behind-closed-doors conversations.

“Nah, don’t worry, I muted the camera and Hunk’s not watching the screen so he won’t notice we’re on dead air.” Sure enough, the big man was taking pictures of the brightening, cool purple sky – likely to send to Shay, who seemed to take up the remaining fractions of his life that Lance wasn’t using. “You seem upset and it’s the birthday boy’s job to make sure all his party-goers are having a good time in honor of the special day.”

“That’s literally the opposite of every birthday tradition ever, but if it encourages some selfless behavior in you, you won’t see me complaining,” Keith sighed, sipping crossly at his first coffee of the day. If his first was only four hours in, how much of his blood would be caffeine by midnight? The thought reminded him of his mathematic problem sets, which was marginally worse than thinking about things with Lance.

Settling on looking up at the man, Keith instantly regretted everything. Lance, too, already seemed tired, but the dark circles under his eyes reflected the purple from the wakening sky and his fading make-up from the day before betrayed some freckles and sun spots around his nose and eyes. Even in a garbage state, he looked perfect, and Keith was becoming more and more concerned that Lance wasn’t actually perfect. That Keith just _thought_ he was.

“It’s- uh-“ Keith swallowed, eyes flitting back to the sunrise and pretending he was content to look at it instead of Lance’s face. “Don’t you think you’re maybe…I don’t know…queerbaiting?”

“Queerbaiting?”

“You know, like when a piece of media dangles a potential queer relationship in front of viewers that will never happen just to get them more excited?”

“I know what queerbaiting is,” Lance scoffed, as if Keith assuming stupidity of Lance was a new concept. “I just don’t understand how _I’m_ doing it. I mean, I AM queer. Is _everything_ I do queerbaiting?”

Shit, Lance was way angrier than Keith thought he would be. “No! I’m not saying that at all, you dumbass.” Why?! Why the name calling, Keith?! Why are you escalating this?? “Just that you keep doing all this stupid shit like you’re into me just for those Kance fangirls to fawn about.”

“It’s actually called ‘Klance’, thankyouverymuch.”

“Why do you get your whole name and I only get one letter?!” Keith hissed, now angry just because it was easier than being hurt, and COMPLETELY self-aware about how poor a coping mechanism that was.

“I didn’t make it up! Obviously, it was my _kittens_ who understood the importance of emphasizing the Sanchez name.”

“Ugh, _stop fucking calling those banshees that_. Literally, fuck them all!” Keith now shouted, gesticulating wildly at the camera, which still pointed blissfully unaware above their heads. Speaking of, Hunk now looked horrified, believing the screaming match was still live. He jumped up to read the chat, which just contained comments about the beauty of the sky’s colors and questions about the sound “being down”.

“Guys,” Hunk whined, rubbing the skin between his eyebrows. “Can’t you just, like, get along for five seconds? I know the whole basis of your friendship is beating each other’s assess but c’mon.” Hunk shot a harsh stare at Keith adding an implied _At least keep it together for his birthday, okay?_

“Sorry,” Keith ground out through his teeth, molars aching from the weight of his jaws suturing his mouth closed.

“What do you even have against my kit- _fans_ anyway? For the most part, they’re sweet girls, minus the occasional weirdos who misunderstand my content and think I’m some adolescent queer looking for a bear.”

“I think you forget that I _saw_ those ‘sweet girls’ at the meet-up at 5 Lions. Flocks and flocks of cis teens rubbing one out to a beautiful, effeminate man getting gritty and sexual twice a week on Youtube.”

“Ew,” was Lance’s only response, crinkling his nose.

“Ew! Exactly! I don’t know what it is about cis straight women that there’s something so beautifully _tragic_ and _star-crossed_ and _rugged_ about two dudes fucking each other in the ass and for trans guys you add ten points each to “tragic” and “star-crossed” with a variable amount decreased from “rugged” depending on how far along in transitioning they are. We’re interesting topics, sexual objects, but never interesting _people_ or sexual _partners_. People daydream about “chicks with dicks” but I’ve never met a guy at a gay bar warbling on about finding a dude with a vag. And you would think that they’d be at least a _little_ bit interested given that they won’t have to get shit on their dick from fucking you.”

“WOAH, Keith-“ Lance got in the moment Keith finished his sentence, panting from the non-stop rant. “I think maybe you just have some of your own issues to work out. Sounds like there are some wild things bothering you that have nothing to do with me.”

“I just can’t believe they aren’t bothering _you_ , Lance! You may be a celebrity to them, but you’re not a person anymore.”

“Look, I know! I agree! I get it!” Lance hissed, surprising Keith by grabbing him by the shoulders to cement his seriousness. “The kittens are definitely not the best group around. I read my comments. All of them. These girls are…not the brightest or the most considerate. But I remember what it’s like being a teenage girl and having all these expectations and confusions and having to be the most innocent little girl while simultaneously maintaining the image of an independent, responsible woman. It’s kind of A LOT.”

From Keith’s own various experiences in different households, he could attest that being raised, rightfully so or not, as a woman was a bit trying. He had always just marked it as yet another reason to regret receiving an unfortunate label at birth.

“So, forgive me for thinking that my story, the story of a trans guy who made it to college and made friends and made it through grueling top surgery, can be inspirational not just for trans dudes but for all those lost kids. And you know what – yes. I _do_ like the attention. I have five brothers and sisters and too many cousins to fit on my fifth-grade family tree project so yes, _forgive me Keith_ if sometimes I want to be the center of attention and be the hot, sexy _gay dude_ I never got to be.”

“…That still doesn’t explain why you have to use _me_ for all this. Maybe I don’t want to be the target of a hot, sexy ‘gay dude’. Maybe I just want to be Keith and hang out with you and your friends make videos and not star in some stupid romantic subplot where I inevitably get feminized and subbed and ‘seme’d in a thousand bored, under-loved suburban girl’s attempts at fanfiction.”

“Keith…” At first, Lance looked like he might apologize, maybe even with a few tears mixed in, then his gaze hardened. “You can’t talk about them like that. At least not to me. I talk about my kittens with respect and I expect you to do the same.”

It was the most stern and disciplined Keith had ever seen Lance in his four years of watching his life as a tertiary observer. Until now, Keith had only had a few glimpses at Lance taking charge, being intentionally magnetic. This version was a veritable unstoppable force.

“I’m sorry,” Keith nearly tripped over himself to say. “That was pretty harsh.”

“It was.” Lance nodded, turning his glare back to the sunrise, which had gone all the way from violet to bright orange, light gleaming over the horizon, throughout the argument.

“I just really don’t appreciate being used. By you of all people.”

“Of all people?” Lance asked, voice too raw to hide his curiosity.

“Doesn’t matter,” Keith replied, not caring if that was an appropriate response to Lance’s question. As the sun broke through the horizon, Keith and Lance both heaved a sigh, letting the blinding rays force the angry tension in their faces towards the single goal of squinting for their lives.

“That’ll do it!” Pidge grumbled from a stool to Lance’s right– much too close to have not heard at least 60% of that conversation, if not 99.9% of it. “Way too bright. This was a bad idea. Next segment required immediately.”

“Ditto,” Keith barked, shoving the base of his palms into his eye sockets to rub away the painful after-image. When that didn’t work, he held up his now-empty coffee cup to block out the sun’s piercing rays. Lance’s recognizably warm hand grasped his bicep to help haul him up.

“I’ll lay off, alright?” Lance said quietly, a private promise. “I didn’t realize you were so uncomfortable with it, and I should have asked. Don’t worry about it from now on.”

“Okay…” Keith replied, not sure how to say that he wasn’t really that uncomfortable right then, just with the idea of deviantart links of them sucking each other’s non-existent cocks being traded in the live chat. Maybe he could have said just that.

_6:31AM_

Compared to other college student abodes, the kitchen of the LanceTrance team was enormous. Keith knew the rented house probably had, like, _house-sized_ stuff, but the kitchen actually had counter space and a pantry and didn’t smell like a festering pile of manure. The shiny freshness was incredibly distracting to Keith, who was trying to make pancakes the only way he knew how to do anything – by manhandling them.

“Keith, have you ever held a spatula before? Like, in your entire life?” Hunk bumped Keith out of the way of the skillet with a formidable hip and tended to the sizzling heap of batter. Now a quarter of the way into the livestream, Keith was fully aware of their silent audience and shot a sheepish grin at the camera. Just in case they knew he hated them.

“What shape were you even trying to make? A flower? A star?” Hunk glanced over his shoulder at Lance, who was poking at Pidge’s masterpiece to their chagrin. “A _heart_?”

“A circle,” Keith ground out, glaring at the lopsided mass that bubbled in the middle – a pained scream that mirrored the inside of Keith’s head. “I can’t believe I messed up something so _fucking_ simple…” The pressure was starting to get to him. He regretted his smile to the kittens.

“Look, not everyone can be good at everything. You were pretty decent at those lunges earlier. I’m decent at…circles.”

“You literally drew a pancake version of a tiger with batter, Hunk. That seems a bit more advanced than me bending a knee while pelvic thrusting.” Keith took over to scrape the mess up so Hunk could have another turn at making a masterpiece. “Here, you can have the skillet in a sec.”

“Um, it wasn’t just a tiger, it was _Tigger_. From Winnie the Pooh?”

“I thought that was a bear guy. He wore a crop top, right?”

Almost like the words “crop top” had triggered something, Hunk blinked and smiled over Keith’s shoulder. “Lance! You’ve gotten pretty good at pancake art, why don’t you come help Keith out.”

Was _Hunk_ in on the plan to make ‘Klance’ look like a thing too? Didn’t Lance tell him less than two hours ago that he wasn’t going to keep pursuing the stupid, thoughtless baity trope? Keith angled his head the slightest he could to catch glimpse of Lance and shot him the deadliest side-eye warning he could. The look he went for was slightly ruined when he saw Lance looked incredibly uncomfortable and Keith swerved his whole body around to confirm it.

“I’m kinda helping Pidge over here, buddy. Plus, you’re so much better as a teacher, you know?” Lance nervously chuckled, refusing to acknowledge Keith with even a glance. Hunk seemed stunned too.

“You sure? He could maybe use some hand-over-hand help…” Okay, what the fuck, Hunk?

“I can’t!” Lance snapped, causing Pidge to startle their pancake flipping enough for the half-baked batter to fall on the floor.

“Shit, Lance can you ever just keep your mouth shut for on-“

“Keith’s too hopeless at pancake-making, just utter trash!” Lance interrupted them, crossing his arms in a defensive maneuver that rivaled Keith’s own usual stance. “I don’t even want to be _near_ that kind of garbage.”

“Tell me what you really think,” Keith growled, not even recognizing his own voice.

“I-I can’t!” Lance repeated, now staring desperately at Keith when before it was uncertain whether he even recognized his presence in the kitchen. Again, his eyes shouted words at Keith that had yet to be translated.

“HEY!” Hunk bellowed, physically stepping into the line of sight between the two. “How about Pidge helps Keith? Maybe you guys can work on making an alien. And Keith won’t be as much of a bother for Pidge’s weak constitution.”

“Woah, I’m not the person that threw up the moment he tried on our _only_ set of VR goggles and ruined the whole system,” Pidge scoffed, still from the floor.

“I HAVE APOLOGIZED SUFFICIENTLY ABOUT THAT,” Hunk says in a voice loud enough to be a yell without any of the anger behind it.

“Mmm,” Pidge mumbled, striding past him and slapping Keith hard on the shoulder. “C’mon Keithy-boy, let’s create some Area 51 baked goods.”

The physical touch was enough to get Keith to focus on Pidge carefully pouring the batter instead of Lance’s constant distressed glances over at him.

_9:45AM_

Keith wanted to assert that the LanceTrance team, with maybe one exception, was _not_ stupid. First, Keith had set a timer after the work-out bit to make sure he and Pidge didn’t leave their binders on for too long. As sappy as passing out in Lance’s arms was at the carnival, it probably wasn’t a promising idea for an already-stressed out Lance to deal with on his birthday.

Second, multiple activities were built-in to give some people breaks for quick naps while others kept the viewers occupied. Currently, the plan was for Keith to watch Pidge do a speed-run of a game he hadn’t seen before – so viewers could enjoy both his reactions and Pidge’s prominent level of skill.

Third, the game chosen was Undertale, which even a year and a half later was still raking in views like no one’s business. As mentioned, the team was _not_ stupid.

“Maybe speed running a game I’ve literally never seen before was a bad idea,” Keith repeated for the third time since they started. Pidge’s eyes had barely left the screen at all, and their fingers trembled in anticipation any time they paused from the keys. Pidge’s own channel was full of speed runs of different games due to their claim that it helped their reflexes when it came to coding quickly. Keith privately thought they just enjoyed the endorphins rush.

“Huh,” Pidge replied, too entrenched in the game to respond. Again.

“I literally don’t know what’s going on at all! Guys?” Keith glanced at the camera, appealing to the only source of information he had – the kittens. After a solid hour of butt-numbing confusion on a dragged-in old porch chair, Keith had lightened up to the audience observing his torture. At least enough to address them.

The chat scrolled by – thankfully slower now that Lance’s face was now face-down in a pillow and not onscreen. Most people were poking fun about how cute Lance and Keith’s “domestic bickering” was, but Keith had taken those in stride. He honestly agreed with them, just denied their reasons. A few even tried explaining the game’s plot, but they named characters that Keith didn’t think he had seen yet. The comments then brought about discussion over how Lance was “such a sex symbol like Mettaton”, which confused Keith, because he saw Lance more as the tall doofus skeleton from near the beginning who over-emphasized his self-grandiosity.

Giving up on the game, he scrolled through the chat and read more of the comments. The grammar and maturity surprised him, and he guessed that this was the crowd left behind when the more teeny-bopper fans got bored in the absence of Lance’s energy. “Anything y’all want to talk about?” Keith drawled, half-jokingly shrugging at the camera. To his surprise, he actually got some immediate responses.

“’Am I also from Texas?’” he read. “Uh, I think so. I was sort of a foster kid until late in high school, but only a Texas foster kid. So, I think that counts?” Some jokes about riding cowboys, and then another question.

“’No offense, but’ – I won’t take offense to anything at this point, really, I’m basically bored out of my mind right now I’ll answer anything – ‘are you strictly-into-dick gay?’” Keith sat back, ignoring that he accidentally announced an AMA for himself, and considered the question. It was something he had wondered so often about cis gay men but never really wrestled with himself.

“Y-yes,” he stammered, the word falling out near-incidentally, agreeing to the concept of dating any sort of man. “Wait, no! Sorry, got the question confused. I mean, I’d date any guy. Anyone identifying as a guy. I think.” _Currently, just one particular guy who was currently in a dick-acquisition process but now thinks Keith hates him. What did that mean?_

Keith felt his palms heat up as people asked more and more questions. None were too personal, but it was incredibly disquieting to hold so much attention from – he checked – 4,867 people, in a room that contained a near-robotic Pidge and the snoozing, occasionally ruffling, unconscious bodies of Hunk and Lance.

“Red, obviously,” he scoffed at the question of favorite colors. “No offense, but that’s like the dumbest question I’ve gotten so far. What else have y’all got?”

Instantly, regret.

_Why haven’t you gotten top surgery yet?_

Oh boy.

A question Shiro asked him once then quickly learned to never broach again.

A question Keith himself asked every time he contorted his shoulders and ribs into his binder.

A question that Keith thought he saw reflected in Lance’s eyes in his top surgery series now nearly a year ago.

Keith froze in the chair, now feeling numb everywhere, not just the part of his ass that weighed on the edge of the stool. He kept still long enough that Pidge glanced at him, nudged his elbow, and muttered, “What are you doing? Entertain the masses,” with no clue to what they were suggesting. The original commenter added, _If you don’t mind me asking_ , which was kinda sweet aside from the fact that Keith really DID mind! He could just give his usual answer – “money” - which he somewhat believed at this point from repeating it so often.

But maybe…maybe talking about it to these strangers would help. Maybe he could sort through his thoughts with the most honest, cut-throat people around: internet commenters. And also distract himself from Lance Thoughts™.

“Well,” Keith sighed, bringing his hands from his forehead to chin, attempting to wipe off his fear. “’Why haven’t I gotten top surgery _yet_ ’ is a little bit more hopeful of a question than I deserve. I may never get to that point.”

A pause, then in response to a question – “No, it’s not money. I mean, it easily _could_ be money but Shi- my brother has offered to help me out with it and when I first considered it I had insurance.

“It’s more of a…fear thing. It took me forever to just try on a binder and when I finally bought my first one – a shitty $15 half-tank that was too small – I thought my life would change. I would finally look and feel the way I wanted to – the way I was _supposed_ to, all along. I didn’t even shut my bedroom door behind me I was so quick to grab that shipping box and tear it open. Putting the thing on was tough, but I’d watched countless videos about putting on binders that I was expecting it, and it only took about five minutes.”

Keith took a breath. The chat numbers were still past 4500, but the chat itself had ground to a halt. It seemed that either everyone was listening, or people muted him to go AFK until his tirade was over. It didn’t really matter either way.

“Wearing a binder is the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life, and I have the most fucking sensitive skin in the universe. I always feel like things are crawling on me, that my skin is burning. Light and sound too – crowds and concerts and subways and even Lance’s screechy voice sometimes is like torching my brain. And the binder was the worst of all. Honestly, even now, I can feel it slowly suffocating me and – yes, I see your question, my current one _is_ the correct size. It’s just…” Keith rolled his eyes back under his drooping eyelids. “…haunting,” he breathed.

Another breath. He felt the pull of the spandex and polyester.

Another breath. His insides were on fire.

“ _Just find a way to distract yourself, Keith_ ,” Shiro would say, if he were here and not in fucking Timbuktu saving lives way more important than Keith’s with a veritable goddess named Allura who probably descended from the stars. “ _Those thoughts are not helpful_ ,” mental-Shiro responded. Fair enough.

“And I guess my biggest fear is that this will happen again!” Keith rushed the thought out, hoping getting himself back to the question would crush the crushing feeling back. “That the surgery will make this horrible feeling happen _all the time_ and at least now I can escape it and I can balance the dysphoria and the sensitivity for the most part and live my life. But what if I get surgery and it all fucks up? I can’t _take off_ surgery if it’s feeling like too much. And I can’t even TALK about this shit because so many trans dudes get fucked over by people’s concept of ‘changing your mind’ after surgery. I don’t want to contribute to that!” Keith was now yelling, but the pain in his chest and the sound of his own voice drowned out anything else that was happening. His breathing snagged, he coughed, he caught himself.

Keith looked around. Pidge had stopped fiddling with the keyboard completely, now looking at Keith with a mixture of horror, respect, and understanding. Behind him, he heard the rustling of sheets and questioning mumbles of both boys being awakened. The chat stayed silent, aside from some entering chiming, “ _ugh I thought this stupid game would be done by now WHERE TF IS MY LANCEY LANCE!!!!!~~~ whats going oooooon”_

Keith chuckled hoarsely at someone’s reply to them of “ _just stfu, god_ ”.

_11:03AM_

“C’mon, I’m sure no one wants to re-live this, right? Pre-transition pictures can be upsetting…right?” Hunk desperately looked around the circle of team members, the only one left of the four who had not dealt his photo album into the center.

“Hunk stop being such a baby and put your baby pictures in our sacrificial circle!” Lance shrilled, literally tackling Hunk to pry the pleather-bound photo album from his fingers.

“As we mentioned before, _multiple times,_ looking at pre-transition photos can actually be really encouraging,” Pidge said, thumbing through their own stack, which was still not quite visible from Keith’s angle in the circle. The camera sat to his left, but was contorted upside-down so that it was facing the pile and could focus on whatever picture they were analyzing at the time. “Shows you how far you’ve come.”

“Maybe- OW! Lance stop biting my fingers! – Maybe for _you guys_ who have like, life goals and stuff like that but my childhood’s just embarrassing and private!”

“Buddy-“ Lance flopped over fully onto Hunk’s lap, taking the boy by surprise enough to snatch the album and skillfully roll off and back to his spot in the circle. “You know me. I have zero life goals.”

“Says the guy getting life-altering surgery at some point,” Keith snorted, then winced when Lance looked horrified for a moment. Keith was determined after his interlude ranting to the kittens to solve the miscommunication problem with Lance, but it seemed that starting off the segment by reminding Lance that he’d yet to decide on what type of top surgery to get wasn’t the _best_ way to deal with it.

If Keith could just get a chance to talk to Lance again, privately FOR REAL. No kittens, no Hunk or Pidge, no chance for theatrics or interruptions. He could explain that while yes, the relationship Lance had implied on camera was inane and demeaning, the idea of a _real relationship_ beyond the camera was…objectively NOT. And Keith needed to somehow communicate this before his anxiety misdirected itself as anger towards the object of his begrudging affection again.

However, when they originally sat down, Keith could see Lance’s hesitation at where to sit, relative to Keith. He crouched directly across from him, looked up to find Keith’s questioning eyes pointed back at him, then swayed to the left and then the right. He ended up seated to Keith’s left, but the camera rigging between them might as well have been a brick wall. Lance was a twitching ball of nerves that seemed intent on keeping his energy on his side of the line. Keith could see now that he was scratching at his thigh over and over, grabbing the edge of his oversized athletic shorts. The skin was bright red.

“Hey, Lance, you okay?” Keith asked, certain Lance would snap back with a “fine” and go back to normal once he realized his nervousness was observable. Instead, Lance turned to look at him hollowly and shrugged. Keith felt the ridiculous urge to hold his hand to force the compulsive scratching to stop, and only barely restrained himself.

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road!” Pidge announced, selecting one of the piles from random and centering the camera to its size. The big computer monitor showed the stream, so if the photo wasn’t right-side up for someone in the circle, they could still see it.

“Woah, why am I going first?!” Hunk’s face was so disappointed even his token headband was sagging in despair.

“Because I say so.” Pidge flipped open the picture book.

Hunk’s pictures weren’t any more embarrassing than usual baby photos. Maybe it was the fact that his face looked exactly the same from age 3 to age 8 to age 14 to now – not that he was currently baby-faced, but that he was born…adult-faced. His hair was kept cropped short, army-style, until he graduated high school, and he explained that his step-mom Sandra learned the military cut from her own time in the army and didn’t want to waste money sending him to a barber. His bio-mom thought it was a cute bonding moment for the two. When Hunk finally moved to his own place and started growing his hair out, he realized he actually loved the style and kept it shaggy, to his step-mom’s apparent chagrin.

There were also the pictures that Hunk showed Keith the other day when explaining the dark time in he and Lance’s friendship. Keith felt a little proud of himself that Hunk didn’t tell that story to the camera – it must have been a tale he was only willing to divulge to close friends.

“Okay,” Pidge started on their turn, opening a scrapbook lined with knitted pink cotton displaying diamonds and hearts in a wallpaper-esque pattern. Threaded into the front, but hidden from the camera, were the words “ _Holt Family Scrapbook No. 16_ ”. “It’s time for some Gunderson extravaganza.”

Pidge explained how their parents and brother were really into “that Brady Bunch family shit”, as was obvious from the handmade scrapbook cover that announced itself as one among many. They claimed it was too difficult to sort through all 27 of the current family photo scrapbooks, so they picked one at random from the middle. With each page, Pidge groveled at how cheesy their family appeared. Big smiles, close together at a Steak & Shake. Big smiles, close together in front of Mount Rushmore. Big smiles, close together at…was that a funeral?

The scrapbook had colored tape covering all mentions of personal details, which numbered many per page. For someone who pretended to hate family funtimes, Pidge went to a lot of trouble to get the scrapbook ready to share for Lance’s birthday. The rest of the group shared knowing glances every time Pidge paused to smile fondly at a family memory.

Next, was Keith.

Keith’s complete collection of childhood photos could probably fill two, maybe three pages in Pidge’s fancy scrapbook. In fact, the concept of books and boxes full of photos was something that struck Keith as something only police officers compiling evidence would do. Or cryptid hunters.

“This is the oldest picture I have of myself,” he said, setting down his headshot from when he first entered Kindergarten. His hair was basically the same length as it was today, but more groomed and with straight-cut bangs. A familiar scowl sat on the child’s face, which seemed ghostly above a black velvet uniform dress for the Catholic school Keith attended at the time. It only took two months for his current foster parents to realize a private school’s tuition was wasted on him. Even though Lance was still acting weird and ignoring him, the somber photo elicited a small snort from him.

Before Shiro and his mom, Keith only had four pictures, all school- or church-related and all depicting an unhappy, lonely child. And he’d admit, that description was pretty accurate. Once he became Mrs. Shirogane’s foster child, the situation hadn’t become much better until Shiro’s accident. Suddenly Keith’s presence became important, necessary for things. Helping Mrs. Shirogane carry groceries in. Counseling Shiro through his traumatic nightmares.

“It may not have been the healthiest situation, but the co-dependence is what really made us a family. In my opinion, that’s just what family is,” Keith ended his personal slideshow with a few pictures from his phone of him, Shiro, and Shiro’s mom. He didn’t want to end on some dumb words of wisdom, but he had already interrupted himself five times to yawn that yarning on any longer would just exhaust him further. Plus, noon-thirty was his time to nap and it was coming up fast.

“I like that,” Pidge remarked, looking thoughtful. “I wonder if that’d be a good slogan for merch – ‘Co-Dependence: That’s Just What Family Is.” They punctuated the phrase by spreading their arms to mime a marquee sign.

“You could say that’s what this channel is,” Hunk laughed. “Four twenty-somethings co-dependent on each other.”

“I guess.” Lance’s voice was quiet, and if Keith wasn’t sitting directly next to him, he might have missed the reply. The anxious tick from earlier was gone but throughout the segment Lance had been unusually taciturn, hardly making a peep unless he was peeped _at_.

“Why don’t you show your pictures, Lance?” Keith prodded in an attempt at forcing socialization, reaching for the last remaining photobook.

“I’ve got it!” Lance chimed, grabbing it and digging his nails into the binding. “I can do it myself.”

“Alright…” Keith put up his hands as a defensive measure but Lance was already opening the book and talking a mile a minute about the first photo.

“This is like, a week after I got home from the hospital – I still have that pink blanket somewhere I think. And then here is me and Cynthia, my first baby sitter AKA the first person in my life to see my ass who wasn’t my parents. Next is my first family reunion, this whole clump here is me and my siblings…”

In only ten minutes, Lance had cut through half of his photobook. Everyone else opted to only show a few portentous pictures from their childhoods, and discuss them in detail, but Lance seemed to want to speed through as quickly as possible, fingers slipping on the plastic photo covers as he rushed to turn the pages.

Keith leaned in, tired of his straining his neck from looking at the screen, to see a picture of Lance singing in a kid’s church choir.

“I didn’t know you went to church,” Keith commented, interrupting whatever opening remark Lance already had going for the next one.

“Yea, I don’t really talk about it much?” Lance replied in a tone that said Keith should have _known_ this information already. “Religion’s, like, kind of personal to me and I don’t just go sharing it with _professional acquaintances_ …”

Keith frowned at Lance’s unreferenced sarcasm. Did Lance really think he outright hated him?

“What about singing? Is this when you started getting into it? What kind of stuff do you sing?” Keith continued leaning to his left, nearly bumping into the camera’s grip to get into Lance’s personal space. He was determined to make Lance interact with him, at least _acknowledge_ him in a meaningful way before the livestream got to the half-way point.

“ _Used_ to sing!” Lance hissed. “I don’t really sing anymore, alright?!”

“Why not?!” Keith pushed back.

“Not that it’s any of your _business_ , Keith, but T has pretty much ruined my range and made me a cracky, witch-sounding nightmare that is only bearable at a low hum to the tune of low-rate car commercial jingles. T basically fucked up my voice, _and my life_ , irrevocably, which I guess you’ll never understand given that you don’t seem to be willing to take risks and do things you want without worrying you’ll _change your mind_!”

Keith blinked, blindsided by Lance’s anger for a moment until he realized he’d been poking the volcano repeatedly with kindling for the past few photos. He practically asked for Lance to boil over and say something he didn’t mean that would inevitably hurt their relationship. Once again. At least now Keith could tell when Lance was just throwing out words for the sake of catharsis.

“Sorry,” Keith mumbled, already stumbling onto his feet. As he moved, Lance’s brows progressively relaxed from concentrated fury to apologetic concern. He reached for Keith weakly, but his leg had already moved out of his grasp. Keith internally cursed himself for being petty enough to miss the chance to feel Lance’s warm hand on his calf. Then he cursed himself for thinking of that warm hand.

“No, Keith, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, you know tha-“

“I know you didn’t,” Keith sighed. “You never do. I’m going to go take my shift napping now. I’m overdue for changing out of my binder.” A lie, but a lie that convinced Lance to remain seated as Keith slunk out of the room.

\----------

Since the crew spent most of their time upstairs where their recording equipment was, the living room on the ground floor was pretty sparsely decorated. A newly purchased trans pride flag hung over a much smaller-sized television connected to a 360 and a GameCube. There was a single, ancient couch that looked barely large enough to hold two full-sized adults and an Ikea table with a missing leg. A mini-fridge, likely left over from Lance and Hunk’s dorm room days, held what Keith knew as a stock of beer and other cold alcoholic beverages. Maybe some strawberry Fantas for Lance. They were his favorite.

Why was their relationship so difficult? They had so much in common, _why_ were they always at each other’s throats? And why, when they weren’t literally dueling it out, were they so…friendly? Intimate? Compatible? This time, Lance’s words hadn’t even pierced through Keith’s skin because he knew, eventually, Lance would apologize. And he did! And the next time Keith said something horrible, he would eventually apologize too. And he would!

Was this circuitous relationship just…doomed? For once in his life, Keith had a desperate desire to just _communicate_ to get to the bottom of what the hell was going on but the constant eye of the audience prevented him from saying anything he actually thought – _heaven forbid_ he talk about things he actually FELT.

Maybe he should have been clearer that he didn’t want to be a stupid gay ploy for the camera, but he did want to be a stupid gay ploy for Lance. Maybe. If they ever had time to just….be.

“Keith?” a timid voice called, and Keith strained his back flipping from one uncomfortable position on the couch to another to see who came down the stairs. It was not Lance.

“Oh, hey Pidge.”

“Don’t be too excited to see me,” Pidge said, rolling their eyes. “I brought down some blankets.”

“Thanks.” Keith took the blankets, and, deciding his pride wasn’t worth it, offered, “I thought you might be Lance. I probably need to talk to him.”

“Yea, uh, _duh_?” Pidge rolled their eyes again, and now Keith could see their constant practice at the movement allowed them some fairly deft eyeball movement. “You guys flip so fast from thirsty to rivalry I’m getting whiplash.”

“You think Lance is thirsty?” He barely restrained himself from saying “ _too_ ”.

“The fact that you two still look at each other with big doe-eyes even after some of the shit you say to each other is proof enough.”

“So…he doesn’t hate me.”

“Do you need a recap on how you punched him at a meet-up in front of his fans? And how he immediately recruited you to join us?”

“That was literally only a month ago! There’s no way in just a _month_ he could go from being a punching bag to smitten. At least I’ve watched his videos for four years, there’s some star power there.”

“I’m not saying he’s like, _in love with you_ , Keith, just that he’s interested! And to be honest with you, when you document years and years of your life on the camera, the lines of who you are to your fans and who you are in real life can get blurred quite easily. I’ve caught myself being way more of a sarcastic brat to even my own family at home because that’s the persona I put on in my videos. Lance’s is a self-absorbed Casanova, which I admit _is_ close-ish to home, but there’s a lot more layers than what you’ve seen. I think he just has trouble…y’know…peeling his layers.”

“Are you saying that Lance is like an ogre?”

“Wow, a Shrek reference, in 2017,” Pidge sighed, immediately turning to go back upstairs. “So edgy. So cool.”

“Thanks Pidge,” Keith called after them. “F-for the blankets, I mean.”

“Sure…” Pidge rolled the _r_ sound until they got back upstairs and shut the door to Hunk and Lance’s bedroom behind them.

Keith stifled a groan as he flopped his head back onto the hard armrest of the couch. He had to talk to Lance. He had to! But he also had to endure twelve more hours of tip-toeing and charading about cutesy, kitten-friendly topics while Lance was thinking _God knows what_ about him.

The worst part was, Keith knew the moment the live stream was shut off, he still wouldn’t have the spine to talk to Lance about feelings. Sure, he had courage and passion when it came to _feeling_ his feelings but not for an actual, sit-down, heart-to-heart discussion. And the only person who could physically _make_ him wasn’t coming back for a few more days.

 _Stop half-assing this, Keith_ , Shiro’s replacement voice inside Keith’s mind scolded. It was something Shiro had to admonish Keith about when he tried focusing only on strength work and neglected endurance training. Maybe he had to invest in endurance training with Lance. Somehow.

 _If you’re committed, act like it_. Keith pulled the blankets over his face to groan in frustration, then allowed himself a breath.

He _was_ committed to showing Lance how he felt.

And he _would_ act like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for all the positive supportive comments!! they really helped with writing this mother of a chapter with all the things I have going on. the next chapter may also be kind of a wait since I live in Florida and a hurricane is IMPENDING but who knows maybe that'll be a good excuse to write more????? idk
> 
> anyway pleeeease let me know any thoughts/comments you have!!! y'all literally fuel my soul


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